Judith Collins casually lounging around her Office with its wall display of the mounted heads of her enemies

TDB has leant that a National candidate is pressuring the hierarchy for the National Party vote for Leader to occur as early as Tuesday this week instead of the set period of time as Judith Collins speaks over the Caucus directly to members.

A secret campaign has begun with National Party members flooding their local MPs demanding a vote for Crusher.

The tactic has worked with 3 of the lowest ranked National MPs changing their support to Collins in the last 48 hours.

The candidate is concerned that if the full length of time is allowed, Crusher supporters will have spooked young MPs into backing her.

TDB also learned that from an internal straw poll that Adams + Bridges can’t currently beat Crusher.

In my opinion Collins would be the most dangerous political Leader in modern times in terms of abuse of power. Tomorrow I will spell out what the Right really want inside National based on their secret strategy and why Judith as Leader would mean NZ is on the verge of taking a large step towards becoming a crypto Police State.

The news that the four main banks in New Zealand, all foreign owned, made record profits in the last financial year, and shipped those profits offshore, generated little obvious controversy. But economists and commentators agree that NZ’s oligopolistic banks are in a privileged position. They can create their own wealth out of thin air, lend it out to the public, charge rent on it in the form of interest, and shift profits offshore. This means the banks share ‘an extraordinary privilege’ not enjoyed by any other type of business. But their huge market share means the four biggest banks operating in New Zealand, are among the most profitable in the world, and last year, they made their biggest profits in three decades.

The biggest banks in New Zealand, ANZ, BNZ, Westpac, and ASB, all owned by Australian banks, who all own each other, plus Kiwi owned, Kiwibank, collectively made a $5.19 billion profit last year, including a massive increase of 7.35% or $355.11 million in net profit, after tax, last year. They own $504.19 billion in (NZ) assets. The four big overseas banks own about 90% of New Zealand’s banking industry, as well as insurance and other financial services. Though they’re bit players, other overseas banks also recorded record profit increases, with three Chinese banks, growing profits by as much as 139%. 95% of those total whopping great banking profits leave the country and are lost to peoples’ disposable incomes, to their pockets, and the New Zealand economy.

Unfair fees and charges, arbitrary interest rates and induced debt, add to poverty, dangerously high levels of personal debt, a distorted housing market, inequality, and economic instability. Banks act like parasites, sucking the money and life out of debtors and shifting the profits off shore.
Fees comprise almost 40% of the banks’ profits, and the big four Australian owned banks in New Zealand charge higher fees here than their Aussie parents do at home. New Zealander debtors are wage slaves to overseas owned banks who owe no loyalty to their customers (It’s a business transaction), or their staff (note banking sector layoffs of late), or communities (branch closures). These banks encourage debt and trap the public in to unjustified credit and account charges. In a perfectly competitive market with ‘well informed and rational consumers’, customers would reflect their dissatisfaction with such a rort by finding another bank. But when the main banks dominate the market (“monopolistic competition”), and customer inertia is high, it’s hard to swap banks and most of them are the same in different guises anyway. Marginal competition means marginal choice, and maximum chance of consumer capture.

Unfortunately, high fees and lending rates from banks that lack integrity, are little disincentive when would be home owners are faced with the decision to borrow on usurious conditions or not to borrow and own a home at all. (And then there’s the housing speculation fueled by enthusiastic bank lending). Even though bank switching is likely at major life changing junctures, even where customer dissatisfaction with banks is high, bank switching is infrequent because of the transaction costs and other complications involved. Surprisingly also, most people are satisfied with their bank. In a recent survey, the banking sector had a customer performance ranking of 79.5% satisfaction. This is a high satisfaction rate compared with overseas standards, but though the smaller banks score more highly than the overseas institutions, the bigger banks dominate market share.

The ANZ is our biggest bank, with around one million Kiwi customers and 31.3% of the market. The ANZ lending business is worth about $72.35 billion, with net loans worth $117.24 billion. That reflects staggering wealth to have in the hands and at the mercy of overseas banks. But the imbalance within the banking system goes as far as the top. The CEO of the ANZ, David Hisco in 2015, earned about $5million, 120 times the pay rate of the ANZ’s lowest paid workers. The CEO of the Commonwealth Bank in Australia who owns the ASB, earns $A12.3 million per annum, in three days what the average Aussie earns in a year.

Cheap credit and eager bank lending mostly by overseas banks, has fueled the New Zealand housing market and left citizens with household debt higher than ever before, sitting now at 167.5% of household income. That’s debt you know the banks would be more than willing to call in if interest rates rose and current lending viability and profit expectations were negatively affected.

So while New Zealand’s attention, and that of the government, is on the alleged impact of foreign ownership of residential houses on the inflated property market, the biggest foreign owners of New Zealand wealth (current and future), in the form of Australian banks, goes unaddressed. Foreign ownership of banks is of greater scale here in New Zealand than almost anywhere else in the world. Net interest margins and profitability rates are higher here than in most other developed countries. Our current and future earnings, wealth, and real estate are in the hands of foreign banking oligarchs. That’s of greater concern, and greater scale, than individual foreign ownership of houses. But there will be no crack down on the banks, in fact in times of crisis, they’re more likely to be bailed out or at least assured of some security, because they’re too big to fail. Attention to small scale overseas buyers of residential land in New Zealand is a misplaced energy, when a magnitude of different wealth is extracted, debt created, and a housing boom exaggerated, by the construction of credit, the entrapment of debt, and the transfer offshore of profit by the big four overseas banks who are the major players in the New Zealand finance sector.

The old saying is as apt as ever “The law locks up the man or woman, Who steals the goose from off the common, But leaves the greater villain loose, Who steals the common from the goose”.

The Housing Minister’s commissioning of three left leaning commentators to undertake a stocktake of New Zealand’s housing has produced the desired result both from the Government and the Opposition. Housing Minister Phil Twyford has claimed that the stocktake report shows that the housing situation is much worse than the previous Government admitted while National’s housing spokesman Michael Woodhouse has claimed that the stocktake is a predictable beat-up and that Government is big on promises but short on specifics.

A Stocktake of New Zealand’s Housingwas authored by public health professor Philippa Howden Chapman and me and released on 12th February. The release event and media coverage of it was dominated by Shamubeel Euqab who was only nominally involved in preparing the report. He is quoted as saying that the private rental housing market was a cluster#@!* and that we needed to build 500,000 additional affordable houses and not the 100,000 the Government is aspiring to build through its KiwiBuild programme. The actual stocktake report makes no such claims but the media appears to have had little interest in evidence or moderate argument.

The Stocktake report attempts to deal with a wide variety of topics across the housing landscape – from rising rents, poor quality housing, homelessness, declining home ownership and tenure insecurity amongst others. It doesn’t offer policy suggestions because that was not in the authors’ brief.

While the report draws many conclusions one compelling one is just how stuffed the private rental housing market is. None of the fundamentals in this market line up to produce anything but rising rents, increasing shortages and often poor quality housing. These outcomes are likely to continue for at least five years and perhaps longer. For example yields on rental property investments have fallen from 6.5%-7.0% in 1997 to 3.5%-4.0% in 2017. The average cost per square metre to build a new house has risen 33% in inflation adjusted terms in the past 10 years. Since 2012 Rents have risen by 25% over the past five years while average wages have risen by 14%.

The private rental market of old was sustained by two things. The first was the promise of untaxed capital gains and perhaps – if could arrange high gearing of the investment in your ‘little renter’, maybe even a tax write-off for the cash losses involved. The second was that the investments were not normally in new housing but in lower valued existing properties in working class neighbourhoods. These lower-valued properties had often been in owner-occupation meaning that tenure patterns in these neighbourhoods changed quickly from a stable balance of owner-occupiers and tenants to a predominance of tenants. Consequently the neighbourhoods changed with higher rates of residential mobility, poorly maintained housing and reducing social cohesion. Not that this matters to the middle class investors creating this environment – they made sure they didn’t live there.

The prospects for the private rental market looking forward are dismal and Shamubeel’s cluster#@!* description is apt. The lower valued properties which were the favourites of Mom and Dad landlords have been bought up. Outside of tiny CBD and inner city apartments, the opportunity to buy newly built low cost properties for investments is quite limited given construction costs and land prices in the suburbs. On any account the promise of further capital gains is faint given that we have probably reached the top of the price cycle for housing and are likely to face several years and perhaps even decades of stable prices. Furthermore tenants have been squeezed by rents rising more quickly than incomes and there is unlikely to be much more to squeeze from low-income tenants.

This would not be so bad if we had not become so dependent on Mom and Dad investors to provide rental accommodation to low-income households. Around 70% of the additional 150,000 households formed in the past decade have been tenant households. That amounts to about 10,000 extra tenant households each year. In other words to meet demand we need 10,000 Mom and Dad investors stumping up with cash and debt of at least $400,000 per house– and at yields of 4%. That’s $4 billion per year.

This may happen but seems unlikely given the much high overall yields made during the heady days of rapid house price inflation. As well many of the Mom and Dad landlords are baby-boomers saving for their retirement which of course is happening right now. In addition banks have become weary of highly geared lending on investment properties.

The crisis narrative to describe the status of the private rental market is accurate. Rents will continue to rise. Queues for available rental properties may grow longer. Overcrowding will continue and may worsen.

The problem with this crisis narrative is that it will soon wear thin as the depth and the intransigence of the housing problem becomes more apparent.

There are not simple quick answers here. Outside of a major meltdown in the real estate market, we are unlikely to see a large scale market adjustment which addresses the current imbalances anytime soon.

One obvious solution is good old fashioned public investment – especially in state housing. But this is an extensive and long-term option. I have previously suggested that we should be building at least 2000 additional state houses per year and that the cost of this is around $1 billion annually. In its 2017 election campaign promised to build at least 1000 but is now looking at how it might up this to 2,000 each year.

As the Finance Minister considers how he might build 2000 state houses per year no doubt the true impact of the Labour-Greens Budget Responsibility Rules will become apparent. These rules include bringing core Crown debt down to 20% of GDP and maintaining recent historic ratios of Government expenditure to GDP. Both great neo-liberal ideas. All this is fine until the economy stalls which of course is exactly the time when we should be building public housing.

To avoid breaching such self-imposed constraints the Government and its budding corporate finance partners might dream up new forms of debt like bonds and Crown guarantees. As we have seen with everything from the South Canterbury Finance extortion to the AMI bailout the public ultimately bears the risks and costs for such creativity. As well these corporate partners will clip the ticket on these creative deals and probably cost us hundreds of state houses in the transactions.

The housing crisis will be with us for some time yet and even with considerable Government effort and commitment. Expectations that the fix is quick and cheap need to be re-set immediately. For this to happen the Government needs to get real about the costs and risks involved and take the public into its confidence as it discovers the difficulties and challenges which lie ahead.

Alan Johnson is a policy analyst for the Child Poverty Action Group and the Salvation Army

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/17/guest-blog-alan-johnson-the-housing-crisis-narrative-suits-the-governments-agenda-for-now/feed/13The Professor who highlighted National are merely a front for Chinese business interests receives threats and has her home broken intohttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/16/the-professor-who-highlighted-national-are-merely-a-front-for-chinese-business-interests-relies-threats-and-has-her-home-broken-into/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/16/the-professor-who-highlighted-national-are-merely-a-front-for-chinese-business-interests-relies-threats-and-has-her-home-broken-into/#commentsThu, 15 Feb 2018 23:58:59 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=97235

If we had a functioning news service staffed with people who understood the basic power dynamics of NZ and had a tiny amount of intellectual curiosity, this would lead the 6pm News bulletins tonight…

A New Zealand academic who made international waves researching China’s international influence campaigns has linked a number of recent break-ins to her work.

University of Canterbury professor Anne-Marie Brady, speaking today from Christchurch to the Australian Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee in Canberra, outlined three recent events which caused her concern.

“I had a break-in in my office last December. I received a warning letter, this week, that I was about to be attacked. And yesterday I had a break-in at my house,” she said.

She said this weeks’ burglary at her Upper Riccarton home was particularly suspicious.

“I had three laptops – including one used for work – stolen. And phones. [Other] valuables weren’t taken. Police are now investigating that.”

Brady also said her employer at Canterbury University had been pressured following earlier work on China’s Antarctic policy and – following a recent visit to China – sources she had talked to were subjected to visits from authorities.

“People I’ve associated with in China, just last year, were questioned by the Chinese Ministry of State Security about their association with me.”

These disclosures came after New South Wales MP Julian Leeser asked Brady whether her recent profile on the subject had resulted in any blowback.

…at a time when one of China’s best friends, Judith Collins, is about to win the leadership of the National Party, one of the few brave academics prepared to point out the power and influence Chinese interests have over our largest political party is receiving threats and her house broken into.

Having a Chinese spy actually inside the National Party is bad enough, but intimidating academics prepared to tell the public about China’s influence inside our political system is now going beyond dangerous into something darker.

IS LABOUR getting Sir-Humphreyfied on housing? For younger readers, Sir Humphrey Appleby is one of the leading protagonists in Antony Jay’s and Jonathan Lynn’s incomparable 1980s television satire “Yes Minister”. So compelling was the Sir Humphrey character (played to perfection by the late Nigel Hawthorne) that his name quickly became synonymous with the obfuscating, prevaricating, manipulative and often downright misleading senior civil servant who steers his ministerial master away from his better instincts towards the maintenance of the bureaucratic and political status quo.

Dr Chris Harris, a specialist in urban design and planning, raised the Sir Humphrey question with me after a careful reading of “Stocktake of New Zealand’s Housing”, the study authored by Alan Johnson of the Salvation Army, Otago Public Health Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman and economist Shamubeel Eaqub, which was released by the Housing Minister, Phil Twyford, on Monday afternoon.

One figure, in particular, caught his attention. This was Figure 3.4 “New Dwellings Consented, By Owner Type, 1970-2017” (see below). It’s most notable feature, explained Dr Harris, was the extraordinary spike in new dwelling consents which followed the election of the Third Labour Government, led by Norman Kirk, in 1972.

The graph shows consents flat-lining at around 23,000 per year in 1970, 1971 and 1972. Between the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1974, however, the number of dwelling consents shot up to an astonishing 39,000.

The first and most obvious question that springs to mind is: “How on earth did the Kirk Government do it?” Finding the answer to that question would, surely, be of considerable assistance to Minister Twyford as he sets about tackling New Zealand’s appalling shortage of affordable housing?

Presumably, the same thought occurred to the “Stocktake” authors. What was their conclusion? That’s when Dr Harris’s eye fell upon the concluding sentences of the paragraph printed immediately below Figure 3.4:

“While current levels of new house building compare favourably with the low levels of construction seen immediately after the global financial crisis, during the period 2009 to 2011, these current volumes are not historically exceptional particularly compared with the early 1970s. However, data on government involvement in the 70s boom is not available.”

Get that? Information on the way in which the Kirk Government managed to nearly double the number of houses being consented “is not available”. (My emphasis.)

In his e-mail alerting me to this extraordinary omission, Dr Harris writes:

“Note the last sentence! In fact, you can find out quite a lot from consulting the on-line NZ Official Yearbooks of the time. State Advances credit, available for actual housing construction but not speculation since 1919, was increased. And on top of that there was as yet no Accommodation Supplement to fritter away government housing money, so that it very much went on actual building. There was also a shift from building large stand-alone houses on the city fringe to building lots and lots of small and affordable flats in more urban locations, which is where the real shortage was, and had long been. And this was all directed from the top by Big Norm.

“Norman Kirk re-founded the old-time Ministry of Works as the Ministry of Works and Development in 1973, and founded the Housing Corporation in 1974, also to try and get more houses and flats built. It turned out that urban flats proved easiest and quicker to build once central government weighed-in to overcome the usual obstacles. This was a really important part of the recipe for getting runs on the board quickly. Our cities are still full of flats built in the 1970s – the standards were higher than in later decades. Mass-produced hollow concrete blocks, suitably reinforced, were the building material of choice. Concrete block walls signify a 1970s flat in the same way that a tiled roof is typical of a 1940s state house.

“Big Norm’s policy of pulling out as many stops as possible and focusing on flats really did work surprisingly quickly and the proof is in the consent graph. Our population back then was only a bit over three million, so the graph actually understates the success of the policies of the 1972-1975 Labour Government.

“Actual builds are always a bit less than consents granted. In the early 1970s the peak rate for actual housing construction was 34,300 units built in one year. This roughly equates to 50,000 a year today, if not more, and that nice round number might explain why Shamubeel Eaqub challenged the government to see to it that 500,000 housing units are built in ten years.

“Interestingly enough, few of the houses built under Kirk’s administration were state houses. To get things moving quickly, the policy was very much one of collaboration with commercial builders and developers, who were offered guarantees to go and work flat out building small affordable units without worrying too much where the money was coming from, or whether the consent was going to be approved.”

Dr Harris goes on to observe:

“You have to wonder whether there is some kind of an embargo on the level of government activism that led to such a boost in housing production in the early 1970s. It’s like an episode of Yes Minister in which the bureaucrats have hidden all the relevant files and the politicians don’t notice that they’re missing straight away. Adding to suspicion of a stitch up by a business-as-usual brigade is the fact that the word ‘credit’ does not appear in the report and there is only spotty and empirical reference to ‘finance’. So, no need to frighten the banks in other words. There also doesn’t seem to be any mention of the really important part played by central government institutions in making things happen more effectively and in a streamlined way back in the past: institutions such as the State Advances Corporation, the MWD – which the Rogernomes abolished in 1988 while dialling-back state construction lending at the same time – and the Housing Corporation. The Housing Corporation is still with us of course, but only in a feeble and gutted sort of a way.”

Here, perhaps, is the explanation for Shamubeel Eaqub’s extraordinary forthrightness during Monday’s media conference in the Beehive Theatrette. With barely concealed frustration at what he clearly regards as the new government’s half-hearted housing effort, he urged the governing parties to break free of the fiscal “straightjacket” in which they are currently restrained by Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s Budget Responsibility Rules.

The last thing the “Sir Humphrey’s” at the top of our own civil service want, deeply imbued as they are with the neoliberal economic orthodoxy which has guided New Zealand public policy for more than 30 years, is for “their” ministers to begin searching back through the historical record to discover how, forty years ago, a newly-elected Labour Government responded to the needs of its people by – of all things – fulfilling them.

I wanted to address an issue that I think is important in terms of the ongoing campaign around human rights for the people of Palestine, justice for the people of Palestine, and that is what is our attitude to the Jewish people in that state of Israel. What should be the stance of people who believe in justice to those who have settled there and are making their lives there, because they demand of the world certain things.

The Israeli state and its political leaders demands of the world that the world recognises Israel. Not only that, they have escalated that a little bit you see, because there was a litlle bit of a problem and I want to take a little bit of time and I’m sorry about that, but they have excalated that demand from not just recognising the State of Israel but recognising the State of Israel as a “Jewish” state, the State of Israel as an exclusive state, the State of Israel as effectively a racist and apartheid state, because that is what they are asking the world when they ask the world to recognise that state as a Jewish state.

Because even on their own citizenship numbers one quarter of the people who live in that state, at least in the internationally recognised borders that were established in 1948, the people who live in that state, at least a quarter of its citizens are Palestinians of Christian or Muslim belief in today’s world, or non belief as the case may be, but they are not and have never been Israelis of the Jewish faith. So their demands of the world to recognise this state is, in my view to demand somethin akin to the world “recognising” the New Zealand state as a “White, Protestant, Republic” of some sort. Anyone who proposed such a demand that the world should recognise this state as a White, Protestant or Anglican or catholic of Christian republic because that is the beliefs of the majority of the people who live here would be considered raving mad. A raving racist, a raving lunatic to want to exclude the indiginous people of the land in which they are living as partners to be equals in society.

The problem the world has is that they demand we recognise them, they demand we recognise them as religious or ethnically exclusive state. But there is a problem with it. They will not, and have never, defined the borders of that state. There is no israeli document that has the borders defined for the State of Israel. Not one, Never has been. Never has been. Not the ’48 border, the 1967 border. In fact every publication that is put out in Israel has areas. And the areas have biblical names. Judea and Samaria for the area of the West Bank, for the area we commonly know as the West Bank, this is simply Judea and Samaria in the Israeli definition. They do not define their own borders. The 1948 borders, the 1967 borders, the wall they have established within the occupied lands from 1967, the annexation of half of the Jerusalem City after the 1967 war, none of these are defined on any Israeli map or citizenship document. So when they demand that we recognise this thing we should demand of them – What is it? What is that thing you want us to recognise. Because they will not and never have defined that thing. Thy have made demands on the world that are intolerable.

They have made demands on the world that have allowed them to establish their state as an apartheid state. Yes, they recognise the one quarter of the population that lives within the land they conquered in 1948. There is a thing about that, you see. Even the 1948 borders were a product of conquest. The land was divided by the United Nations into Palestinian and Jewish lands. And the people who established the jewish state conquered signifcantly more of the territory in 1948. So Israel, the 1948 Israel, which was recognised by the United Nations, was a land already of conquest and expluslion, but that state is the only state in the United Nations that had a condition put on its recognition. That condition was that those people who had fled as refugees in 1948 would be allowed to return. The United Nations said we will recognise your conquest – “loathsome” or not “approved” or not – we will recognise this new state so long as you allow those people who fled as a consequence of that war the right to return. And they have never allowed those people the right to return. They lost the right to have the recognition of their state, their 1948 state, they lost the right to have that state recognised by refusing to meet a condition the United Nations established for that recognition.

Furthermore, the 1967 state, which is a bigger state, which includes all of the West Bank, and for a long time and still de facto includes the Gaza Strip, the 1967 state has actually existed longer than the 1948-67 state. This state, the post-1967 state, has existed for half a century. And the millions of people who lived in subjugation and apartheid, military control, and all the rest of it that is asociated with that occupation, those people have lived there longer than the people of South Africa lived under their apartheid state before it was finally destroyed. We do not and should not recognise apartheid states, we should demand they be dismantled, we should demand that all of the people in that region live in freedom.

Kia Ora

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/16/why-israel-is-an-apartheid-state/feed/5The greatest enemy of the new Government isn’t the National Party, it’s the Public ‘Service’https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/16/the-greatest-enemy-of-the-new-government-isnt-the-national-party-its-the-public-service/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/16/the-greatest-enemy-of-the-new-government-isnt-the-national-party-its-the-public-service/#commentsThu, 15 Feb 2018 22:34:25 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=97218

Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash said many in the fishing industry were unhappy with the camera proposal and all options were on the table – including dumping it entirely.

One of Mr Nash’s first moves when he became the Fisheries Minister was to put the brakes on the rollout of electronic monitoring of the commercial fishing fleet.

The former National government came up with the plan last year, saying it would protect the sustainability of fish stocks and act as a deterrent against illegal activity, like fish dumping.

The greatest enemy of the new Government is not the National Party, it’s the self interested Ministry fiefdoms whose internal right wing ideological stance will strangle any real attempt at culture change or left wing policy implementation.

I’ve heard from numerous sources within the new Government over concerns that Ministers have been swamped by their Ministry’s and the vested interests of the Ministry Officials are what are being promoted and real change stymied everywhere.

Some Ministers are fighting back vigorously and some are demanding real change, but many are being swamped.

The Labour Party, Green Party and NZ First Party must urgently look to spend a percentage of their Leader’s budget to group fund a special joint politburo who can support Ministers in their battle to implement Party policy rather than get tricked and trapped by their Ministry’s.

This politburo should promote an 0800 whistle blower number to call on public servants with ethos to dob in their managers for not implementing compassion.

Borrowed money should not count as income that can reduce benefit entitlements, saysChild Poverty Action Group (CPAG).

In a case being heard in the High Court, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is arguing that a sole mother who took out loans to pay for her home repairs and to support her children – because she could not otherwise afford to on the benefit – should have to repay more than $120,000 in so-called ‘over payments’.

This Friday, October 27 is the last day of the hearing. Ms X. has name suppression and is represented by Frances JoyChild QC.

No form Ms X. ever filled out for her benefit asked her to list loans as a form of income. The cost of the nearly eight years of reviews and appeal is huge, both financially and in terms of her health.

“It has created libraries of decisions, exhibits, letters, submissions and court time. To say nothing of the costs of Ms X’s time or her lawyers,” says Associate Professor Susan John, CPAG economics and welfare spokesperson.

“It is very worrying that mothers are treated this way and that MSD takes such a narrow view of the law,” says Associate Professor Susan St John, CPAG economics and welfare spokesperson.

New Zealand currently has a punitive welfare system that reduces support for sole parents who repartner, and applies sanctions to those who do not name a father on benefit applications. In finding loans as declarable income, it further reduces the ability of low-income families to support their children, resulting in deeper and longer term poverty and more unfair prosecutions.

…this isn’t an isolated case. When asked by the Judge why the MSD was chasing another beneficiary in another ‘fraud’ case, the lawyer from the Ministry said, ‘in case she wins lotto’!!!!!!!

Our civil service has become uncivil.

Our Public Services are supposed to be the bastions of egalitarianism which are essential for a progressive liberal democracy progressing. Instead, spiteful zealots mutate it into the cruelest of torture devices used by the State to keep the poor too terrified to fight back.

Just like CYFs abusing kids or Housing NZ evicting tenants for 12 months and then wondering about the rise in homelessness or throwing beneficiaries off welfare and not recording what happens to them or Ministry of Development giving the homeless motel bills worth $50000, just like Corrections miscalculating Prisoner sentences – all of them don’t care about the actual welfare of the people they are supposed to care about.

Prisoners, the poor and beneficiaries have no rights as far as our burnt out and mutated public services are concerned, and attempts to push through new Government policy will fail if there isn’t a vigorous counter attack inside the Ministries.

National just doesn’t get it. Bill English’s persistence with the accusation that Labour had an $11.7 billion fiscal hole in its figures was, by far, his biggest mistake as Simon Wilson in the NZ Herald says. But did they learn? Even in the face of clear political damage they kept digging.

Now National are persisting with another blatant subterfuge: that they were the party that lifted 85,000 kids out of poverty and that they are much more ambitious in their goals to reduce child poverty than Labour.

So in the debate this week on the first reading of The Child Poverty Reduction Bill, the opposition continued to dig themselves an even deeper hole in speech after tired, self-justifying speech. Paula Bennett, Michael Woodhouse, Louise Upston repeated the mantras that they alone were the caring ones.

Looking at that one measure over a different time period tells us a very, very different picture about the success of that last Government’s approach to child poverty. …That Opposition’s measure should have been from when they came into Government to the end, and they should have been looking across different measures like this bill will set up, because if they had, and were completely honest about what had happened, then they would have admitted that the latest household income survey showed that the number of children living beneath 60 percent of the median wage, after housing costs, which is the relative income poverty line, is now 290,000—30,000 more than in 2008. Most importantly, between 2008 and 2016, the number of children experiencing the most severe poverty rose from 105,000 to 140,000. So the point of this bill is to have a suite of measures—a comprehensive look at how we are doing, to stop Governments cherry-picking numbers that put rhetoric and their own political ambition ahead of the well-being of our children.

As Jeni Cartwright says in her blog Confusion reigns on measurement of Child Poverty – THANKS BILL, National’s 85,000 claim is based on hardship data taken from 2011, the height of the impact of the recession rather than when National took power in 2008. Also the reduction in the last few years has a lot to do with the stepped up role of private charities, who fill some of the gaps reducing measured hardship. These are stop gaps measures. Reports from the coal face now tell of growing food insecurity, homelessness, and families in growing desperation. Charities are increasingly overwhelmed.

Michael Woodhouse appeared to think the 85,000 was the result of National’s families’ package. He refers to the throwaway line pre-election from Bill English about taking 100,000 children out of poverty as if it constituted a real plan

The previous Government took 85,000 children out of poverty. Its Family Incomes Package, passed in Budget 2017, was mostly repealed by this present Government in order that they can give my children completely free first-year tertiary education—an example of both misguided targeting and a lack of ambition. The previous Government committed to taking 100,000 children out of poverty in this term of Parliament, and now we have a target that says that if they’re lucky, with a fair wind—and they don’t completely muck up the economy the way business is concerned they might do—that target is going to be 100,000 children out of poverty in 10 years

While never too coherent, Paula says

The first thing is the targets. The targets are too low. To go out there and say that it’s something like 70,000 over 10 years to be doing the—and we might get to 50,000; it’s too low. It’s just simply not ambitious enough. Work out your priorities. Work out what needs to be done in your next Budget. Put that into place. Look at your debt levels. Look at what needs to be done. Follow a great example, actually, of two previous finance Ministers under National and know that you actually can put more money genuinely into tens of thousands of New Zealanders’ homes that need it.

Let’s be clear: deliberate cuts made by Bill English to Working for Families has wiped about $2.5-3 billion from the finances of low income families since 2010. Spending on WFF by 2016 was $700m per annum below the real value of WFF in 2010. Pre-election they suddenly discovered that there was a problem and that the cuts and outright neglect had been too severe. They had the means to remedy this last year, but instead they dangled a carrot of a 2018 increase to Working Families. That is, poverty would only be addressed if they were elected. Their Families Package was minimal and their figures showed it came nowhere near restoring $700m of spending let alone making up for the lost income since 2010. Lack of indexation would have eroded this as the figure shows:

Figure Did National propose enough to restore Working for Families?

Displaying a lack of understanding of what the figures actually show, Woodhouse goes on to bluster.

Yes, there were nine years, and in nine years a far greater number of children were lifted out of poverty than at any time in this country’s history, and the previous Government was the first—it supported those families through a significant recession and then it raised benefit levels for the first time in 42 years.

The data is not yet showing the impact of the minimal benefit increase, but the evidence from the social sector is that it made very little difference.

Louise Upston enters the fray:

What we’ve seen, if we look at results and if we look at what has been achieved, is that 85,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in the last five years. So what the New Zealand public want to know is is the new Government paying attention to what worked, or is the new Government going to be ideologically driven and going to just abandon anything that the previous Government had in place that worked?

Let’s be clear—even if some families now have shoes for their kids, raincoats and thus have slightly fewer material hardship lacks so they fall out of the hardship figures, their poverty is not addressed. Their parents don’t have enough income and as a consequence they have too much debt. Both the hardship data and income figures have another limitation: the survey on which they are based include only families with a residential address. Growing homelessness is making this data less representative and reliable.

This government’s Family Package is a great deal more likely to impact on child poverty than was National’s. While not perfect, and is coming in months too late, and is not indexed properly, it is a much bigger package.

Under Bill’s plan, working families would face draconian clawbacks after the very low threshold of just $35,000. They had to do this to limit the overall cost of the package to pay for proposed tax cuts which were largely to the benefit of the better-off. National would have created a great deal more family poverty among working families and they had no vision or plan at all for their pie in the sky lifting 100,000 kids out of poverty. Please stop digging Bill.

WHAT ROUGH BEAST SLOUCHES towards Wellington to be born? What sort of National Party are the people who brought down Bill English trying to establish? And will there be enough reasonable men and women in National’s caucus on Tuesday, 27 February to stop them?

In the movie, Schindler’s List, the hero, Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) attempts to persuade the SS labour-camp commandant, Amon Goeth (played by Ralph Fiennes) to refrain from picking-off random prisoners with his hunting rifle. For a few days, Schindler’s appeal appears to be working. Eventually, however, the commandant’s murderous impulses get the better of him and he resumes his deadly sport.

For 12 years, Bill English has played the role of Oskar Schindler: cajoling, persuading and, on occasion, outmanoeuvring the far-right of the National Party into running with a moderate, liberal-conservative political agenda. It was by trading on the popular appeal of this agenda that John Key and Steven Joyce were able to give the National Party three general election victories in a row.

Not that English was some sort of bleeding-heart liberal in disguise. On the contrary, his Catholic faith mandated a deeply conservative stance on many of the social issues which Key supported as proof of National’s liberal bona fides. By the same token, however, it was English’s Catholic faith that caused him to reject the swingeing economic austerity measures imposed by right-wing finance ministers in the UK, Canada and Australia.

Not only was English convinced that austerity was economically ineffective, but he also recognized that it was politically counter-productive. Not that the economic and social policies of the Key-English era were entirely benign – far from it. The National Right had to be appeased with anti-worker and anti-beneficiary measures that were intended to – and did – inflict a great deal of unnecessary suffering on tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders. In the hands of a different finance minister, however, matters could have been a great deal worse.

This was the knowledge with which the National Right, like SS Commandant Goeth, found it so difficult to be reconciled. Why be just a little oppressive of the poor and marginalised when you possess the power to grind their faces in the dust? Why restrict oneself to fastening legal leg-irons on the trade unions when you can legislate the evil socialist bullies out of existence altogether?

For the far-right political power only becomes real when it is used. To exercise restraint is to allow those within your power to set the limits of their own persecution. Far from being a manifestation of strength (as Schindler suggested to Goeth) the willingness to exercise restraint is a craven demonstration of weakness.

In his fascinating Newsroom essay on Bill English’s political career, Bernard Hickey describes the occasion upon which his subject was so moved by the recollection of his own and his wife Mary’s family histories that he wept:

“He talked of his admiration for his father-in-law’s family ethos and hard work in raising a big family in Wellington, despite the struggles of arriving with little from Samoa in an unfamiliar city. He also talked about a quiet chat he had with a kaumatua on a marae about the problems of Maori youth, and the need for strong communities with their own resources. His point was that he admired the self-reliance and quiet conservatism of family and community life. He saw his role as helping those communities and pulling Government out of the way to let them get on with it. It wasn’t an ugly or dry form of libertarian scorched-earth politics. It was a deeply humane and thoughtful approach where Government was supposed to treat people with empathy and dignity and as individuals, rather than as just another beneficiary locked into welfare for life. His views on helping to lift people out of poverty were a precursor to his championing of the social investment approach, which he was only just starting to roll out through the Government as Labour returned to power in late October.”

It was during this part of his talk that English was obliged to pause for a few moments:

“The tears rolled down his nose and splashed onto the lectern. You could hear a pin drop. The audience was with him though. English’s story was utterly authentic and thoughtful and showed a depth of humility and humanity that struck a chord that night. He got a standing ovation when he finished.”

English’s moderate conservatism, Hickey seems to be saying, is born out of a love for ordinary people. By contrast, the vicious conservatism of the far-right is born out of the gnawing fear that ordinary people might one day decide to exact retribution from those who have found it expedient to grind their faces in the dust. That fear begets hate which, in turn, is translated into institutional and physical violence. The great paradox of far-right aggression, however, is that by oppressing the poor, the marginalised and the dispossessed it only brings the terrifying day of retribution closer.

Instead of being thankful that New Zealand’s democratic constitution transforms these days of retribution into peaceful transitions of power from one combination of political parties to another, however, the far-right seethes with frustration, and consoles itself with fantasies of imposing a day of retribution of its own. On that day, all those who have deprived them of their rightful power and status will get what’s coming to them.

That’s where we are now. English’s moderation is deemed, by his colleagues, to have failed the National Party. New, and much more aggressive leadership is required. Those panderers to, and enablers of, the poor and marginalised – Labour and the Greens – must be driven from the Treasury Benches as quickly as possible. And Winston Peters, that conservative turncoat and traitor, must be cast into the ninth circle of political hell – and his worthless party with him.

William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, saw it all happening nearly a century ago, in the fretful aftermath of the First World War. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”, he wrote in his most famous poem, The Second Coming.

Organisers – Direct Animal Action – will help rural and urban New Zealanders hold large ‘STOP’ signs at the entrance of the event, calling on the new Government to stop rodeo by banning it in New Zealand.

“This rodeo season has seen a lot of well attended protests outside rodeos across New Zealand” says Direct Animal Action spokesperson Apollo Taito.

“We’re anticipating another strong turn out this Saturday from Waikato locals and others parts of New Zealand.

“Rodeo has no place in a 2018 New Zealand. We therefore congratulate the Green Party for putting forward a Private Members Bill that will ban the worst aspects of rodeo – calf roping and flank straps,”

“But we’re calling on the Greens and our new progressive Government to take stronger action by banning rodeo full stop. No one wants to see an animal stressed and scared in the name of human entertainment, anymore,”

One of these 3 men is going to stab the other two deep in the back and dump their corpses in a tunnel. Can you guess which one?

How did media go from ‘Bill has leadership wobbles’ to ‘there are no leadership wobbles’ to ‘oh Bill’s gone’ – where were all our political journalists?

When it’s Labour, the media have wall to wall coverage of Labour’s leadership worries for months on end, when it’s National they all seem to just believe ‘there’s nothing to see here, move along’.

If you can’t see this as a coup stretching back to the Todd Barclay leaks, then you don’t deserve to be a Political Journalist.

There has been a concerted campaign to destabilise Bill the moment the Todd Barclay leaks started in the middle of last year.

The way Winston’s super leak managed to damage everyone this group wanted to hurt.

The way Bill was purposely destabilised before the conference and the way Chris Bishop was set up with the snapchat allegations 24 hours before Bill stepped down so that Bishop couldn’t run are all obvious signals that this group’s grasp of dirty politics exceeds anyone else’s within National.

The winner will be the Collins/Bridges ticket with Judith as leader and Bridges as the deputy. This will immediately empower each of their pet Sith, Cameron Slater and Matthew Hooton.

If you thought Dirty Politics was bad before – prepare to see real horror.

Mark Mitchell is Judith’s boy and his entry into the leadership battle is merely to anoint him so that when he suddenly steps down from National 6 months before the next election to become the leader of the Conservative Party he gets a free run in his electorate and gives National their political partner to become the next Government.

It’s interesting that all the power players now moving into position to take the leadership are all former members of the controversial Slater and Lusk candidate preparation camps.

The Right are rising within National and expect them to usher in a level of dirty politics never seen before. They will ignite white rage and fan it with Chinese business money.

Think Simon Bridges is the reasonable member of that team? Watch this and watch the cute mask slip for a hard core right winger…

The real threat now to the new Government is that after banishing Matt McCarten, they have no one who can play at the level they need to protect themselves from a Slater/Hooton/Lusk onslaught.

There’s a great story about establishment National Party identities debating Judith ever becoming leader and their genuine fear – so the story goes – was that none of them could hand on heart ever rule out Judith declaring martial law.

This image more than any other sums up Bill’s legacy. New Zealand vs Old Zealand.

It is respectful to allow Bill English his day yesterday without comment, but today I’m really going romper stomper on all this ’27 years of public service’ praise by highlighting the enormous social policy damage this fundamentalist inflicted upon NZ

This line by the mainstream media that Bill English somehow saved NZ from the GFC highlights their media elitism. Bill English protected the middle classes from GFC by throwing beneficiaries onto the streets – that’s not a hero, that’s a coward!

And let’s be clear, I’m not be facetious here, when challenged about the Billion dollar hole in Government funds early in National’s rule and asked where he would make that money up, Bill simply told NZ, from beneficiaries.

What many always missed about Bill English is that he was a fanatical Catholic. For English, the greatest sin was state welfare which allowed the poor to gravitate towards secular institutions as providers instead of fearing God.

English has spent the last eight years deep in the budget books, where he is clearly a fiscal conservative, but nowhere near as ideologically driven as say, Ruth Richardson. On social issues however, this Catholic man is very solidly to the right.

He voted against the legalisation of same sex marriage. He voted against civil unions. He voted against prostitution law reform. He voted for a 2005 bill that sought to clarify that marriage should only be between men and women.

English is perhaps most vocal on abortions. In 1997 he said Parliament had “fallen short in our duty to protect the unborn child”.

Anti-abortion groups list him as a supporter.

As Health Minister, he actively attempted to reduce the number of abortions, introducing a booklet about “other options” and foetal development.

His wife Mary, who is a Wellington GP, is on a list of doctors who have reportedly refused to provide abortion services or contraception. She told NZME that the pair were “both conservatives on anti-abortion issues”.

…he was driven by a far Right God to redesign the neoliberal welfare state so that even less State money continues to support the valueless and sinful existence of solo mothers.

English was far more dangerous than Key ever was. Key was a self serving populist who looked after Key first, English was a religious zealot whose Southern drawl and dryness masked a hard right moralistic fanatic.

English rammed through hard right moral doctrine to appease his angry right wing God. He killed off secular Government social obligations which he saw were sinful by pretending to resource only the truly needy. It’s a clever way to fool people, but it’s simply making the neoliberal welfare state even more punishing and more draconian.

English focused on mutilating the State’s capacity to fund and dispense its social obligations so that desperate people are pushed towards God or Gods representatives on Earth.

English also stopped the recent cannabis reform in Parliament.

English mocked climate change.

English was the one who controversially signed off on the Kim Dotcom case that has put NZ on the hook for $6.8billion in damages if Kim wins.

English claimed to have seen the SAS footage where our troops are alleged to have committed a war crime and claimed he saw no evidence of that. When that tape finally surfaces, Bill will be proven a liar.

Bill’s deception over the Todd Barclay tapes gave a stark insight into how ruthless and manipulative he really was and staring down the barrel and telling NZ that Labour had a $11.7billion hole when he knew that was a lie was him at his most desperate to win.

And what of Bill’s beloved farming community that he cares for so much? What has he left them as a legacy? An industry that steals and pollutes water, that is selling base ingredients to China, who has many mortgaged up to the eyeballs because of dairy intensification and an industry that now faces oblivion because of technological advances in synthetic meat and milk.

All his life, from gay rights, abortion rights, marriage equality, climate change and cannabis reform, this man has been on the wrong side of history. In the end his religious fervour and his value system generated huge social welfare ideas that were more punishing and less compassionate than he ever intended, that’s because Bill’s sense of love never extended to his fellow human being, it was always set by a distant and angry God.

After 27 years of public service, Bill deserves his rest and he deserves his family time, but my only gratitude is that he has gone, not that he served.

Judith’s new ‘Leader of the Opposition’ office was controversial for it’s addition of an armoury and Cameron Slater as her Secretary. “Some say they don’t know what’s more dangerous, semi-automatic rifles or Whaleoil’, Judith cackled.

I don’t know what the hell was going through her mind, but Julie Anne Genter has sent this out…

…but Judith doesn’t care about Transport, she cares about building more bloody roads!!! Put that to one side, let’s be quite clear here, in my opinion, Judith Collins represents the greatest danger to NZ politics in its truest sense than anyone since Muldoon. Curwen Ares Rolinson

There’s a great story about establishment National Party identities debating Judith ever becoming leader and their genuine fear – so the story goes – was that none of them could hand on heart ever rule out Judith declaring martial law.

Judith’s deep connection with Slater and Lusk and the dark means with which ‘someone’ has been destabilising Bill’s Leadership since the Todd Barclay leaks alongside her Orivada scandal, her acquiescence to Chinese business interests and her need to stand down for an inquiry into whether or not she was planning a hit on the Head of the Series Fraud Office all mark her out as a threat to NZ democracy, certainly not its fucking champion.

I am going to believe that Julie Anne Genter is being sarcastic here, and that this tweet is a joke because NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE with any progressive intelligence whatsoever would allow someone as dangerous as Judith Collins anywhere near power.

And anyone championing Judith’s rise to power, can not be trusted with it themselves.

If your need for identity politics strips you of your wisdom, then you don’t deserve to be in the game in the first place.

But I am certain Julie Anne was being flippant and not genuine. It is however something Green Party members voting will need a clear answer to before they vote.

UPDATE: I have been assured that Julie Anne Genter’s tweet was a tongue in cheek joke.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/14/did-julie-anne-genter-just-lose-the-green-party-co-leadership/feed/14On English’s Billexit And Why This Means National Is In Trouble For 2020https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/14/on-englishs-billexit-and-why-this-means-national-is-in-trouble-for-2020/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/14/on-englishs-billexit-and-why-this-means-national-is-in-trouble-for-2020/#commentsTue, 13 Feb 2018 19:42:02 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=97147

I’m frankly a bit puzzled when it comes to yesterday’s shock political news, and for one simple reason:

Contrary to what a number of people are saying (particularly the “SECOND ELECTION LOST IN A ROW” style of comments) – Bill English leaving the National Party Leadership and Parliament may not actually help contribute to a National-led government in 2020.

Why?

First up, it’s hard to see National actually improving its performance from Election Night. Their failures in the weeks after were those of negotiation [and, arguably, the fruit of ‘dirty tricks’ played *during* the campaign – the architects of which are all still around] rather than vote-garnering [they actually *increased* their number of votes over 2014].

As applies 2020, this therefore illuminates two prospective pathways to victory. The first of which, being somehow managing to lure one or the other of Labour’s C&S partners away through honeyed words and Ministerial portfolios, thus denying Labour the numbers to form a Government – because National’s doing so instead.

And already, we have a bit of an issue here. Insofar as it is difficult to see who National would be able to elevate from its Caucus to the top job who would be better equipped to negotiate with New Zealand First than English. Although a potential counter-argument would be if National somehow managed to find both a figure and sufficient motivation for attempting to negotiate with the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand instead. Which is, for any number of reasons, pretty seriously unlikely – but given English himself was prepared to extend the relative olive-branch of not smashing the Greens in the face with a stick after Election Night 2017 by leaving the door open to a call from James Shaw … perhaps in two and a half years’ time things might be different on one or both sides.

The second pathway is built around National increasing its share of the vote to the point at which a Labour-led Government becomes non-viable – either through something like NZF exiting Parliament altogether, and/or through National gaining votes, and/or through National somehow winding up in the same position they were in on Election Night 2014 [i.e. before the Specials and such came in] of being able to govern alone if they so chose.

This is, if anything, an arguably *more* difficult scenario now that Bill’s gone.

Because while English definitely seemed to lack a bit of lustre during his head-on engagements with Jacinda on the campaign trail last year, there is no denying that he quite successfully reached out to a reasonably broad portion of New Zealand. Not as a “charismatic” frontman [as people for some inexplicable reason seem to brand his predecessor, Key]; but as a “safe pair of hands” to the older demographics of potential swing-voters who’ve got mortgages and are anemic about the notion of financial shocks to their (credit) system.

National can either seek to find someone to replace that kind of cred – which will likely be something of an exercise in futility, as nobody else in their Caucus can actually front up and point to a record [however fudged and airbrushed and PR, SPIN, and DISTORT-ed] as Finance Minister that seemingly screams “steady as she goes” in the way that English could – or they can attempt to do something different.

Which quite likely means attempting to find an “Anti-Jacinda” to try and hew into Labour’s recently bolstered vote. Which is … not likely to be their most successful plan, if indeed they do attempt it. Many of Labour’s ‘new’ votes at the last Election came from people who didn’t vote in 2014. These people [and I don’t mean people who were under 18 at the time] are rather unlikely to wind up supporting National, for any number of obvious reasons. And many more of those aforementioned ‘new’ voters were either Greens or NZF supporters at previous Elections who’d decided to back Labour this time instead – so once again, a very tough prospect to drag over to the Right.

Meanwhile, for those ‘swing voters’ who DID previously support National, yet went over to Labour this time around – much of their decision-making appears to have been predicated upon the idea that National over the previous 9 years had become stale and wrongheaded in its governance. I’m not sure how a mere 3 years on, with a substantively similar Caucus and Front Bench, National will be able to meaningfully dispel that impression and convince people that putting them *back* in won’t ultimately result in a slightly rebranded “more of the same”.

But hey, maybe somebody’ll decide that Nikki Kaye vs Jacinda Ardern had one outcome [repeatedly] in Auckland Central over elections previous and hope against hope that it’ll work out similarly on the national stage.

It’s also worth noting that English’s elevation to Leader of National may very well have been responsible for some of New Zealand First’s flagging fortunes – “conservatives” suddenly having a reason to go back to the darker shade of Blue with a Capital C Catholic on a lot of social policy at the helm of the party and nation. English in Exile may therefore give New Zealand First a bit of a boost and help ensure it makes it over the 5% threshold as the “only” “conservative” voice left in Parliament [notwithstanding an older generation of National MPs who may see their own spate of retirements later in the Term]; thus further frustrating any National plans of denying Labour a support-partner or attempting to govern alone [something that will be much easier with the redistribution of seats that would take place if NZF had a large ‘wasted vote’].

In any case, with the singular exception of the New Zealand Labour Party in the past year … voters don’t like the appearance of instability generated by changing leaders in swift succession. The National Party isn’t *quite* at Labour-from-2008-2018 [more especially, 2011-2014] territory *just* yet, but it is worth noting that they’ll have had three leaders within the relatively short space of a year and a half.

If they get the *right* leader, that’s one thing. but I would be entirely unsurprised if infighting occurred and started leaching out into the public domain regardless. Particularly once Shadow-Cabinet appointments and suchlike are underway and people start “missing out”.

With an additional possibility that we may see something akin to what happened with Labour under Cunliffe – wherein a whole lot of Nats decide to put their focus on self-preservation rather than the previous and arguably quite remarkable interior discipline that National has managed to maintain for much of the last 9 years; motivated in no small part by scorn for the “wrong” figure in their individual eyes now being In Charge.

There’s also an interesting rhetorical calculation as to which ‘message’ would be better for National against the incumbent first-term Labour-NZF-(Greens) Government.

That of “things were better under the previous Government – hence why you voted for us”; or “things WILL be better under our NEXT Government”.

Obviously, National’s next choice of leader will have a considerable influence on how all of this plays out. I mean, the existence of an #ABC faction as applies Judith Collins means that despite her demonstrable ability at channelling and playing upon “the fears & prejudices of the aspirational lower middle class”, if she somehow manages to win the position, there’s a very real chance of her tenure not leading back into the Beehive.

Meanwhile, several of the other ‘clear contenders’ so to speak either run the risk of being perceived as too close to potentially less than optimal parts of the previous Government [Nick Smith on housing and the environment, for instance; or Paua Bennett on welfare [as in, as Minister, not her previous source of income] and ‘dirty tricks’], or as questionably relatable to the broader New Zealand electorate – especially in comparison to Ardern [e.g. Simon Bridges, who gives off a compelling impression that he’s finding his human suit to be a bit itchy form time to time].

In any case, the arguable strength, discipline, and cohesiveness with which the previous leadership transition from Key to English was carried out, was impressive.

I will be inordinately surprised if National manages to accomplish the same feat for a second time running.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/14/on-englishs-billexit-and-why-this-means-national-is-in-trouble-for-2020/feed/11Bill English resigns as Leader of the National Partyhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/13/breaking-bill-english-resigns-as-leader-of-the-national-party/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/13/breaking-bill-english-resigns-as-leader-of-the-national-party/#commentsMon, 12 Feb 2018 22:37:14 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=97127

As TDB hasbeenpointingout, the destabilisation campaign against English has reached its moment and he has stood down.

The threat of a full scale civil war where details Bill didn’t want going public on right wing attack blogs are covered in the ooze of dirty politics.

Bill English destabilised as Leader before conference + Chris Bishop having snapchat allegations leaked to stop him running as leader = Judith Collins?

Watch now for the Collins/Bridges faction to manoeuvre.

The Right are on the rise. Cue clips of Judith Collins walking with the Imperial March from Star Wars.

There are several reasons why our troops should be pulled out as soon as possible.

Firstly, they compromise our independence. The troops are there at the behest of the American government to add another flag in a US-led military “coalition” which has done so much damage since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Secondly, there has been mission creep, which we have not always been told about. For example, the troops have not been just training Iraqi troops, “behind the wire” at Taji base, as John Key had us believe at the outset. They have secretly been given permission, probably last year, to operate elsewhere in Iraq including at the Qayyarah West Airfield, near Mosul. Prime Minister Adern says they haven’t actually operated from there so far.

Thirdly, from early on the New Zealand deployment has involved more than a training contingent. It has included Kiwi officers who have been inserted into the coalition command. One such person is Brigadier Hugh McAslan, who was appointed deputy commander of the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command – Operation Inherent Resolve.

Fourthly, it’s bad to be locked into to America’s political and military strategy for Iraq after the defeat of ISIS. The largely Shia Iraqi government is but one player in a many sided contest. There are also powerful Shia militia (some with allegiance to Iran), two Kurdish forces, armed Sunni tribes, and Turkish troops conducting operations in northern Iraq. The United States has often backed players that have increased divisions, rather than healed the wounds. Current American policies have been disastrous in Syria, the Yemen and Palestine. Why do we expect them to be better in Iraq?

It’s wrong to paint a rosy picture of the Iraqi government forces trained by New Zealand and other foreign forces. They are also capable of horrific war crimes. In a Guardian article entitled After the Liberation of Mosul, an Orgy of Killing, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad described the widespread torture and revenge executions carried out by Iraqi forces after they had beaten ISIS.

Fifthly, there is a much better role for New Zealand in Iraq. We could be helping with social, economic and humanitarian programs, for which there is a great need after the destructive war with ISIS. Such programs would be more effective if we didn’t have troops there and weren’t seen to be tied to American policies.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/13/why-nz-should-withdraw-its-troops-from-iraq/feed/15Taking Stock: Is the Government Doing Enough to End the Housing Crisis?https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/13/taking-stock-is-the-government-doing-enough-to-end-the-housing-crisis/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/13/taking-stock-is-the-government-doing-enough-to-end-the-housing-crisis/#commentsMon, 12 Feb 2018 20:04:58 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=97107

THE FULL MAGNITUDE of the housing crisis confronting the new government stands revealed in its “Stocktake of New Zealand’s Housing”. Released this morning, the document paints a far worse picture of the situation than even the parties now in government presented to voters from the opposition benches.

In the words of the three authors of the stocktake, Alan Johnson of the Salvation Army, Otago Public Health Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman and economist Shamubeel Eaqub:

“The past 25 years have seen the gradual demise of the so-called Kiwi Dream – a place where home ownership and the economic independence which this offers, was within reach of most working families. Home ownership rates have fallen to a 60-year low and could fall further. These falls have been alongside rapid house price inflation in many parts of New Zealand and, with this, deteriorating affordability. We are quickly becoming a society divided by the ownership of housing and its related wealth and recent housing and tax policy settings appear to have exacerbated this division.”

The policies advanced by the Labour-NZF-Green government in response to New Zealand’s housing crisis – most particularly Labour’s KiwiBuild initiative – no longer impress informed observers as either bold or comprehensive enough to bring about a speedy resolution of the crisis. On the contrary, they seem doomed to fail: there being neither the material, nor the human, resources required to make them succeed.

One has only to look back at the first great wave of state-initiated and funded house construction to appreciate the full scale of the difficulties confronting the new government.

Between 1936 and 1949 the first Labour government was responsible for the construction of 30,000 state houses. In other words, over a period of 13 years, the Department of Housing Construction and its private sector contractors were able to build fewer than a third of the number of dwellings which the present government has promised to build in ten!

What’s more, those 30,000 state houses were built at a time when the New Zealand economy was awash with unemployed labour and underutilised resources impatient to be set to work. Labour’s state housing programme was the New Zealand equivalent of US President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal”: a massive public works programme designed to both enhance the nation’s quality of life and provide steady and well-paid employment for its people.

One of the ways the First Labour Government accomplished these goals was by mandating the use of local materials in state house construction. This decision gave an immediate and massive boost to all those businesses ancillary to the construction industry. To help the private sector keep pace with the state-induced demand, the Department of Housing Construction established two publicly-owned factories dedicated to producing the standardised joinery used in state house interiors.

The present government’s chief promoter of the CPTPP, David Parker, might pause to consider that such a policy of buying and using only Kiwi-made and sourced materials is expressly forbidden in practically all of the free-trade agreements New Zealand has signed since 1984 – including the CPTPP.

The state housing programme of 1936-1949 involved an unprecedented mobilisation of New Zealand’s human and material resources to construct a total of 30,000 dwellings. Even allowing for the fact that New Zealand’s population has more than doubled in size, how likely is it that Labour’s Phil Twyford is going to out-build Jack Lee’s Department of Housing Construction by a factor of 3 – in just 10 years?

Is it even remotely feasible that: from a tight labour market already suffering serious skill shortages; and from a construction sector already running at full-tilt; this government will be able to elicit an average of 10,000 additional houses per year?

Because, just to be clear, that total of 30,000 state houses constructed between 1936 and 1949 was over-and-above the normal total of dwellings commissioned and constructed by and for private companies and individuals. It is not yet clear whether Twyford’s promise of 100,000 “affordable homes” between 2017 and 2027 is on-top-of, or included-in, the output of private house construction.

It is important to remind ourselves at this point that Twyford’s “affordable” KiwiBuild homes are expected to sell for between $500,000 and $600,000 – a price completely beyond the reach of the tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders who possess neither a home of their own, nor a secure tenancy in somebody else’s.

For these: the working-poor on rock-bottom wages; Kiwis struggling to survive on a benefit; and, increasingly, for pensioners without a freehold home of their own; the Labour-NZF-Green government is promising to build just 1,000 state houses a year.

With the findings from the Stocktake of New Zealand’s Housing in their hands. With their heads chock-full of data showing how desperate New Zealand’s housing situation has become, Mr Twyford and his colleagues are proposing to build 1,307 fewer state houses than Jack Lee and the First Labour Government managed to build in a little country laid flat by the greatest depression in human history – eighty years ago.

The recent Housing Report reveals National’s ineptitude when it came to homelessness and housing unaffordability. Even retiring baby-boomers do not escape National’s incompetence when it came to unrestrained migration; insufficient housing stock; spiralling speculation; and poorly-planned infrastructure to cope with a rising population;

It also showed home ownership had slumped dramatically since the 1980s – especially among Pacific and Maori people – and Auckland’s housing problem was created by a mix of population growth, partly fuelled by migration, and the construction and land development sectors “hindering” housing affordability.

It also pointed to a potential time bomb in the impact on housing affordability on the elderly, finding the proportion of older people who were living in mortgage-free homes had dropped from 86 per cent to 72 per cent since the 1980s.

The recent Housing Report commissioned by the new Labour-led Coalition is a damning indictment of the previous National government’s indifference and gross negligence to homelessness and housing unaffordability.

The report confirms a worsening housing and homelessness crisis which most New Zealanders saw happening before their very eyes.

“They acknowledge that social housing includes housing provided by NGOs [non governmental organisations] but then ignore that when they conclude that the number of state housing properties have gone down. Clearly that hasn’t happened, they’ve gone up.”

.

What is clear is that Mr Woodhouse is utterly clueless when it comes to State housing properties.

In the 2008/09 Annual Report, Housing NZ stated that it “manages a portfolio of more than 69,000 houses” (p4).

The true status of our housing failure and inequality has been laid bare in todays damning report…

Housing Minister Phil Twyford has released a “sobering” stocktake on housing which has found homelessness was worse than thought and there was a growing “floating” population of people in insecure housing.

It warned that New Zealand was “quickly becoming a society divided by the ownership of housing and its related wealth”.

It also showed home ownership had slumped dramatically since the 1980s – especially among Pacific and Maori people – and Auckland’s housing problem was created by a mix of population growth, partly fuelled by migration, and the construction and land development sectors “hindering” housing affordability.

It also pointed to a potential time bomb in the impact on housing affordability on the elderly, finding the proportion of older people who were living in mortgage-free homes had dropped from 86 per cent to 72 per cent since the 1980s.

…here is the thing I just can’t comprehend.

How the fuck did it get this bad without the mainstream media screaming about this for 9 years?

How come an avalanche of social damage can build over 9 years and collapse without the mainstream media of NZ noticing for almost a decade?

Where was the critical analysis of National? Where was the holding the powerful to account? Well if you have a neoliberal media who conform to neoliberal cultural mythology of individual success, they can never challenge the right wing Government of the day.

The same panelists and pundits all vetted for their conformity to the neoliberal cultural myths alongside journalists who don’t rock the boat creates a complacency of opinion that misses and can not comprehend the reality until it explodes in reports like this one.

We didn’t just need a new Government last September, we needed a new media.

The ACT Party were out on the weekend with 100 people supporting their Auckland march to oppose the closure of charter schools.

Some of the people supporting charter schools are genuinely concerned about their children’s education and think what is on offer through charter schools may be better than what is currently provided through our public school system. It isn’t. It’s much worse.

Before going into detail though it’s a valid point to ask the question: Since when has ACT been concerned about children’s education?

Since when has it shown the remotest interest in the hundreds of thousands of New Zealand children living below the poverty line?

In fact the economic policies they championed in the 1980s and 1990s through their leaders Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble drove those same hundreds of thousands into poverty in the first place and reduced, yes reduced, educational opportunities for these same children through the disaster that was and is Tomorrow’sSchools.

The ACT Party’s sole interest in education and charter schools is as a way for wealthy investors to get rich through privatising public education for profits – big profits.

They are using children from the low-income communities to advance the agenda of the rich.

ACT’s charter schools are modelled on charter schools operating in the United States where they have been an educational disaster. The “most successful” charter schools are the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Programme) schools. ACT brought KIPP founder Mike Feinberg to New Zealand in 2012 for a national tour to help promote charter schools. His visit was a failure as the truth about KIPP and how its schools are run was exposed. (See the backgrounder on KIPP prepared by the Quality Public Education Coalition for Feinberg’s visit – it’s at the end of this piece)

In short, research shows KIPP schools weed out 30% of kids before they get to Grade 8 (our Year 9). The figure climbs to a staggering 40% for African-American boys. Translate that to New Zealand for a moment. Would we tolerate any school system expelling 40% of their Maori and Pacific Island boys before they get to secondary school age?

New Zealand charter schools are repeating the pattern set by US charter schools – cream off the kids you want at enrolment time and leave the most difficult kids for the public schools. Then crow about your success and slag off the public schools to which you have discarded kids with behaviour issues and/or those of lower academic ability.

Vanguard Military Academy for example, which features in ACT’s campaign to keep charter schools open, has a very high dropout/expulsion rate compared to public schools.

And despite ACT’s claims that they would expect children with special education needs to be disproportionately enrolled in charter schools, former education minister Hekia Parata was forced to admit that not a single child who would qualify for ORRS funding (special targeted funding for children with special needs) was enrolled in any of the nine charter schools established at that time.

We also need to remember that by far the most important group of children failing in our schools are transient children (kids who shift schools frequently because of poverty-related issues) and we can be sure none of these children are enrolled for long in any charter schools.

Here in New Zealand we have a wide variety of state and integrated schools from the traditional single sex schools, co-ed schools, religious schools, special character schools and alternative education schools such as Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery. If there is a genuine, demonstrated need for a different type of school then it should fit within the public education system and be funded as such.

Some of the charter schools may be able to transition to the public school system but they will lose the huge amounts of extra funding they have received compared to public schools and they will have to teach the curriculum with qualified teachers.

That is the least we should expect from any school which receives government funding.

Meanwhile MPs Willie Jackson and Kelvin Davis, who have expressed support for charter schools in the past, could learn a lot from the experience of Polly Williams. Polly was a black American who championed “vouchers” in education and charter schools because she believed it would improve schooling opportunities for black children. She was heavily backed by the right wing and wealthy businesspeople and was brought to New Zealand in the 1990s by the Business Roundtable to advocate for privatised education here. Within a few years she had changed her mind however as she saw the destructive power of profit-driven education over the interests of children from low-income communities.

Our education system needs better funding – far better funding for schools in low-income areas. We need to halve class sizes for all students, not just for those attending charter schools or private schools.

Instead of self-serving support for charter schools Jackson and Davis should be pushing for the best education deal for ALL our kids.

Charter schools were always a con.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/12/charter-schools-using-the-poor-to-advance-the-agenda-of-the-rich/feed/31Why we must rally to stop this new TPPA Frankensteinhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/12/why-we-must-rally-to-stop-this-new-tppa-frankenstein/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/12/why-we-must-rally-to-stop-this-new-tppa-frankenstein/#commentsSun, 11 Feb 2018 18:32:15 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=97058

The TPPA rubber hits the road over the next three months. After an about-face on their opposition to the original deal, the Labour and NZ First have spun as hard as they can without even sounding convinced themselves.

They made a pragmatic decision that will have consequences for decades ahead. Even without the US, the toxic elements of the old TPPA remain intact, with some suspended pending re-entry of the US. Claims that the remaining eleven might refuse to reinstate some of the suspended items in the face of US demands for even greater concessions is pure fantasy.

The government seems intent on signing the TPPA-11 on 8 March in Chile despite widespread general scepticism, and a sense of anger and betrayal among their supporters.

Opposing the signing is crucial for multiple reasons. Even those who are ambivalent about the new TPPA need to challenge the government’s backtracking on this, lest it do the same on other issues of more important to them.

For the many hundreds of thousands who truly care about the TPPA, there are real risks to achieving a progressive future in which neoliberalism is genuinely dead, as the new government has promised on election night.

Trade Minister David Parker and MFAT are running consultations where they push the line that Labour is committed to a new inclusive and progressive agenda – then they try to justify signing the TPPA. How are we going to realise that agenda with the millstone of the TPPA-11 around the country’s neck?

Their position is fraught with contradictions. It’s great that David Parker can recognise that the privileged rights of foreign investors to sue the government (ISDS) is ‘in a state of flux’ around the world, and believes the system will ‘become less popular over time’. But the latest UNCTAD figures on investment disputes show that foreign investors don’t share that view. Signing New Zealand up to our most expansive set of investor rights ever, at a time when the PM calls it a dog and the trade minister says the regime is in ‘flux’ makes no sense whatsoever.

Fundamental questions of democracy and sovereignty are also at stake. The secrecy surrounding the new text (which I believe the government genuinely wants to sees released) shows an even greater contempt for democratic scrutiny than the original negotiations. David Parker’s excuse is that the text needs legal scrubbing and translation; but even the much longer previous text was released without scrubbing or translation.

The parliamentary process, which Labour, NZ First and the Greens strongly criticised, also risks being worse. If they sign the deal, it would then be tabled in the House. The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee would call for submissions. But the committee of eight has four National members, including the chair, deputy chair, former trade minister and former foreign minister; the government has four novices to these issues, three from Labour and one from the Greens. Conveniently for NZ First, it is not on the committee. The review of the TPPA-11 can only be a cosmetic exercise. Likewise, National has already said it will supporting the implementing legislation.

Of course, people will make submissions and oppose the agreement and the legislation. But the first step is to stop the government from signing the deal. That requires pressure to put principles before pragmatism from people who feel outraged, but also have the arguments to sustain that outrage.

A round of meetings in Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin over the next two weeks aim to give people that information. The Auckland and Wellington meetings feature Laila Harré addressing issues for labour. Burcu Kilic from Public Citizen in the US is a specialist in the impacts on access to affordable medicines and the digital domain. And I will talk about the big picture and debunk the government’s claims. The other meetings will be me along with the great local activists.

Tomorrow, Its Our Future will also launch a petition urging the government not to sign and Parliament to make changes on how agreements are negotiated and adopted in the future.

I blogged about his disgusting comments here when they first came out.

Here are my 5 thoughts on the latest developments.

1 – Stripping Bob Jones of his knighthood because he was racist is a tad fascist

Brothers & sisters, we are not a theocracy, we are a progressive liberal democracy. It is not a crime to have a racist opinion nor is it a crime to express a racist opinion. It is ignorant, offensive, petty, dehumanising, immoral, unethical and fucking ugly. But it’s not illegal. Yes, it’s illegal to discriminate based on race, but having a racist opinion and speaking it? We don’t arrest people for opinions

2 – Having a racist opinion isn’t hate speech

Let’s not give Bob’s petty and ignorant rant the kind of significance of actual hate speech. Hate speech is when you are attempting to incite violence against another group of people.

“Kill all the Māori and drive them into the sea”. That’s hate speech.

“Burn all the Chinese businesses and beat them in the street”. That’s hate speech.

You get my point right? Hate speech is a serious and terrifying thing that we must always prosecute when it happens, but this bile and cringe worthy brain vomit from a tired old bigot like Bob isn’t hate speech, and giving him the power of actual hate speech is beneath the meaning of the word.

3 – If you wanted to strip Bob Jones of his Knighthood, surely THIS was the reason

This sort of (always male) behaviour is a regular occurrence in the capital. In the 1980s when long-overdue reforms saw the closure of some isolated, scarcely used post offices, a Nelson region goose turned up in a park opposite my office, surrounded by the standard litter of signs, asserting he was starving to death in protest. I bowled across and nailed him with some impeccable logic. “Why starve to death?” I suggested. “Why not get it over with quickly and commit suicide?” So he did.

One of my daughters working, or more accurately, attending in our office at the time was appalled. “Don’t you feel bad?” she asked me. “To the contrary,” I replied. “Anyone who values their life on the existence of a country post office plainly hasn’t got one. I did him a wonderful favour.”

…was the moment to demand this prick had his Knighthood stripped from him.

4 – That Bob Jones is racist isn’t the issue, that the NBR published it is

Beside the fact that we don’t punish people because they have an opinion we don’t like is the truth that Bob isn’t the problem here. The problem is the NBR. The NBR is the most right wing newspaper in NZ and openly supports the neoliberal agenda. They are an elitist shit rag that provides Jones with a platform, not because they believe in his racist diatribes or are champions of free speech, they give this tired racist dinosaur a column because they think he’s funny. How the NBR have managed to escape the social media rage directed at Jones is the real question and by focusing on this attempt to strip Jones of his Knighthood, we are actually letting NBR off the hook.

5 – How can Bob Jones possibly sue for defamation when he no longer has a reputation to defame?

News that Jones has responded to the petition with threats of defamation are actually the most delusional thing this sad old racist has managed to say to date. Defamation law asks if a reasonable person would think less of the person being defamed. Seeing as Bob is a vicious, nasty, suicide-goading-then-bragging-about-it-fuckwit, nothing the petitioners have said could lower Bob in the eyes of a reasonable person any more than Bob’s own words and ugly behaviour.

Brothers and sisters, I’m all for going to war with our enemies and I love nothing more than to smash the right, but we fight above the belt, we don’t go low. Attacking someone based on a lie or a falsehood has no honour and I have no respect for those who use such attack methods.

The important questions here are did Bishop initiate the contact and if he did what was actually said?

We know some parents weren’t happy and that’s fine, they complained and he immediately changed his snapchat settings. If this is simply a case of him choosing to be on a social media platform and then getting contacted on that platform by teenagers, then the attempts to smear him as some type of sleaze or predator are outrageous and defamatory.

I don’t like the bloke and think he’s gutless for voting against the cannabis reform, but trying to paint him out as a sleaze in a social media environment where mere accusation is now the evidential threshold and the death of due process the real victim, I think Fairfax should be forced to apologise for the framing of their story if there is nothing more to come out.

I’m not kicking a person when they are on the ground based on a lie. There’s no honour in that.

The caucus retreat in Tauranga was preceded by a bout of leadership speculation with unnamed MPs saying they were preparing for the possibility English would stand down and suggestions there could be an attempt to roll deputy Paula Bennett.

At the retreat, MPs including those considered likely to stand for the leadership if English did stand down, were publicly backing him and Bennett to stay on until 2020.

“I’m not surprised, ” English said. “I’ve had strong support from the caucus and the party and from the large number of voters who voted for us, so support for me is not an issue.”

The headline shouldn’t be ‘National support Bill’ it should be ‘Bill English refuses to let Judith Collins become leader’. The unprecedented leaks before the Caucus retreat that were sent to destabilise Bill’s leadership were an attempt to see how much Bill would fight to retain the leadership.

Sources to The Daily Blog have said Bill’s decision to hold firm was because he was utterly against the possibility of Judith Collins becoming leader.

This now sets the scene for those forces who want to replace him to start a destabilisation campaign.

Expect to see attack pieces and leaks to start appearing on right wing attack blogs once the economy gets hit by a wobble so the rank and file are angry and reactionary.

We have a global economy that has been fed $15Trillion in quantitive easing, $10Trillion in bonds and the lowest interest rates for 5000 years. This market is so distorted now that the computer algorithms are mercilessly punishing human greed by forcing massive technical corrections.

But don’t panic.

As people see their Kiwisaver accounts get slashed and suddenly face hefty increases in their mortgage on houses that are grossly over valued , people barely holding on won’t be able to.

The reality is that markets have been horribly distorted and a hard crash has to occur. The reason Winston was so grim the night he picked Labour as the Government was because he knew this correction was coming.

There are enormous problems with the stability of the global economy that go to the very heart of neoliberalism and when the full impact starts to set in, people are going to start to panic. The danger point will be when people start pulling their Kiwisaver out of the stock exchange and put it straight in the bank, that will begin a run away event on the stock exchange as more and more Kiwis start frantically pulling their depleting accounts out of the market.

There comes a point when panicking becomes perfectly rational.

All eyes will be on the Dow Jones for Friday to confirm if this is the beginning of a much more fundamental sea change.

Because climate change is a political problem & not a scientific question, The Daily Blog is naming all cyclones after our MPs and Companies who have done so much to hold back genuine climate change reform – this new one that is joining our increasingly erratic and weather pattern is called ‘Cyclone Gerry’ in honour of Gerry Brownlee who did sweet FA in 9 years on climate change.

JULIE ANNE GENTER’s entry into the Greens’ co-leadership race presents Green Party members with a hard choice. Either, they will opt for sentiment and symbolism, and elect Marama Davidson. Or, by electing Genter, signal their determination to prioritise cool-headed pragmatism and substantive policy achievement.

Some commentators have already decided that the Greens’ “activist base” will vote in overwhelmingly numbers for Metiria Turei’s “natural successor”. As both a Maori nationalist and a fervent fighter for social justice, Davidson openly celebrates the sort of street-level agitation that the “Baby Boomer” Greens look back on with pride, and which some Green “Millennials” regard as the only “authentic” way of doing Green politics.

The assumption here is that these “activists” constitute a clear majority of the Green Party’s membership. A swift review of Green leadership elections, however, raises serious doubts as to whether the party membership really is as radical as many New Zealanders believe it to be.

Following the tragic death of Rod Donald in 2005, Green Party members were presented with a choice between Nandor Tanczos and Russel Norman. They chose Norman. A few years later the choice was between Sue Bradford and Metiria Turei. They chose Turei. The last contest was between Kevin Hague and James Shaw. They chose Shaw.

The historical pattern here is clear. Asked to choose between a candidate associated (at least in the public mind) with radical and/or controversial political causes; and a candidate unburdened by an excess of electorally-negative baggage; the Greens have consistently opted for the latter over the former.

In the face of these historical precedents, the smart money would be on Genter – not Davidson.

That historical preference for a safe (or, at least, safer) pair of hands is likely to be accentuated this time around by the traumatic experiences of the 2017 General Election campaign.

Just how likely is it that a majority of the Green Party membership stands ready to embrace a candidate who proudly aligns herself with the radical policies of Metiria the Martyr? Do they really want to witness their female co-leader engaging in ideological fisticuffs with the leaders of the Labour Party and NZ First? Are constant headlines highlighting the policy differences between the coalition partners and their activist sidekicks more, or less, likely to see the Greens lift their share of the Party Vote in 2020?

The political trajectory of the Green Party over the past ten years has been towards precisely the cool-headed pragmatism and substantive policy achievement that Genter, more than any other member of the Green Caucus (with the possible exception of Shaw himself) has come to represent.

At her announcement on Parliament’s forecourt, she told the assembled journalists that she wanted to help the Greens develop a “clear, bold and distinct vision for 2020”.

Decoded, her message is all about presenting voters with the sharpest possible contrast between the Greens’ and the coalition parties’ election manifestos. Genter is betting that the Green Party truly is, as she told waiting journalists, “the future of politics”, and that if the Greens’ vision of a sustainable New Zealand is presented in a way that doesn’t frighten the electorate, then the Greens position in the House can be improved dramatically.

That is a goal which can only be achieved, argues Genter, if her party “manages the risks”. Which is the closest thing to a “dog whistle” anyone is ever likely to hear in the mouth of a Green candidate. The message, aimed at what Genter clearly believes to be the “moderate” Green majority, could not, however be simpler – or more brutal: The last thing we need now, after waiting 20 years for a place in government, is another Metiria!

It’s a dog-whistle to which a great many Green Party ears will prick-up and listen.

Assuming the fight remains a straight-forward contest between Davidson’s symbolism and Genter’s pragmatism, the pragmatist will, almost certainly, join Shaw at the top of her party’s greasy pole.

The entry of a third candidate – most likely the Conservation Minister, Eugenie Sage – would, however, signal an effort by the Greens’ “old hands” to blunt the increasingly sharp edges of the Green Party’s ideological differences.

The risk, however, is that the membership might fail to take the hint, and that the moderate vote would be split between Sage and Genter – allowing Davidson to come through the middle. Should that occur, the Minister for Women, and the Associate Minister for Transport and for Health will simply have to put her head down and wait for better weather.

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

Shakespeare as street theatre. Song, schtick, and a bit with a dog! Valentine and Proteus have been dreaming about making it in Milan since they were little kids.Then, just as they celebrate their final night in Verona Proteus realises the woman of his dreams is right in front of him. He has to ask himself – should you be loyal to your best mate? Or the love of your life?!

Shakespeare’s first play is a romantic comedy full of energy and jokes – this exuberant one-hour production presented by an all female cast doesn’t let the pace go for a second!

The fact that half the prison population in New Zealand is Maori is simply a national scandal that must be ended.

Many Maori are in prison for being poor ie unable to pay fines the wealthy have no trouble paying or victims of laws that shouldn’t be there in the first place like those criminalising cannabis possession.

It simply a fact that Maori are subject to racist discrimination at every stage of the so-called justice system. You are more likely to be stopped in the street if you are brown, more likely to be arrested once stopped, more likely to face more serious charges if prosecuted, more likely to have no legal representation if in court, more likely to be convicted, more likely to be imprisoned, more likely to receive a lengthy sentence.

Prison population numbers have increased by 364% over the last 30 years to over 10,000 today.

New Zealand’s imprisonment rate at around 150 per 100,000 is the second highest in the wealthy advanced capitalist world and is second only to the super-star of imprisonment – the United States. Both Labour and National governments have spent tax-payers money in an endless bidding war when it comes to “law and order” policies.

Prison sentences have become almost mandatory for many offenses, the length of imprisonment has got progressively longer, early release for good behaviour harder to get, without any evidence being provided that this made the community any safer.

It has been made increasingly more difficult to obtain release on bail when arrested and more difficult to get an early release to reward good behaviour.

There is almost no ability for prisoners to access mental health or addiction services in prison despite the admission from the chief executive of Corrections Ray Smith that of the roughly 20,000 people going through prison each year, approximately 91 percent of them have alcohol or drug addictions, or mental health issues over their lifetime. The number entering prison with those issues is 61 percent.

Everone knows that access to family, health services, education and training, decent jobs have the best impact on preventing reoffending so we seem to insist on creating a system of punishment that does the exact opposite.

There have been two recent surges in imprisonment numbers. The first was under the Labour-led government from 2002-2007 under the “tough on crime – tough on the causes of crime” Justice Minister Phil Goff. Goff led a rewrite of the law with the explicit purpose of increasing penalties and bail conditions. Briefing Papers warned that the changes would lead to an increase in the prison population and the need for more prisons.

Phil Goff was proud of his achievement as the following press release from March 2004 boasted that the numbers being imprisoned were increasing while crime rates were decreasing:

Tougher sentencing and parole laws enacted by the government in 2002 will see New Zealand’s prison population increase by over 20 percent in the next seven years, Justice Minister Phil Goff said today.

“The forecast says the predicted increase in the prison population is a reflection of legislative changes and a series of initiatives undertaken by this government,” Mr Goff said.

“As intended, the Sentencing Act 2002 has resulted in longer sentences being imposed. At the same time, the Parole Act 2002 is expected to increase the proportion of sentences that inmates actually serve. Under the Bail Act 2000, more high-risk defendants are being denied bail.

“The projected increase in the prison population is not the result of increasing crime. It comes at a time when New Zealand’s crime rate, and total recorded crime, has dropped substantially from a peak in 1996. There has also been little change in the average seriousness of offences over that period, according to Ministry of Justice research,” Mr Goff said.

“A record number of police, and a of over $1 billion, has resulted in increased crime resolution rates again last year, and more people brought to court and sentenced for their crimes. The Government’s Crime Reduction Strategy and Methamphetamine Action Plan have also resulted in more people facing prosecution.

“The public referendum in 1999 showed New Zealanders wanted tougher measures taken against criminals, and the government has acted on that. These figures are the proof.

“The forecast confirms that since the Sentencing Act 2002 came into force, the average sentences have increased across the board. We have also abolished the nonsense of serious violent offenders being automatically released at two thirds of their sentence.

“New Zealand’s worst offenders are also now receiving the harshest sentences ever handed down. Already this year two double murderers, Joseph Samoa and William Johansson, have been given life sentences with minimum non-parole periods of 22 years and 23 years; while last year William Bell received 33 years’ non-parole for triple murder; and Bruce Howse was given 28 years’ non-parole for murdering his two stepchildren.

“It’s money ideally we’d much rather spend on areas like health and education. However, in the short term tougher sentencing is necessary to deal with serious recidivist offenders and to keep the community safe.

“Over the longer term, it will be measures to address the causes of crime, rather than simply prisons, which will bring down crime.

“Early intervention, which deals with anti-social behaviour at a young age, is ultimately a more effective and cheaper way of cut crime. Over the next two budgets the Government will be increasing its efforts in this area,” Mr Goff said.

The second surge in prison numbers came in 2015 after National reformed the bail laws. Again Labour endorsed the bail law changes. The Bail Amendment Bill passed into law by 102 votes to 19. It was opposed by the Greens, the Maori Party, Mana and Brendan Horan.

It was claimed the change would make the laws fairer and only increase the number in prison by 50 or so. The actual increase was 1500 over the next two years. Again Maori were the big majority detained without bail. And one of the main reasons for being denied bail was not the nature of the offense but because they did not have accommodation outside of jail that was deemed “suitable”. Being poor becomes a crime in itself.

National has also imposed so-called “double-bunking” to slow the prison building cost – at the price of degrading and violence-prone overcrowding.

The Corrections Department is predicting the prison numbers to continue increasing to 12,000 by 2026 if there is no change in policy. A new 2000 bed prison is set for sign-off in April this year.

The so-called free-market extremism carried out in New Zealand under the term “neo-liberalism” was also accompanied by a cruel and callous promotion of an attitude that “failures” should be abandoned to their fate. Failures were deemed to be anyone who lost their job, got into trouble with the law for using recreation drugs, had a baby without a proper partner. Academic literature actually shows that the greater inequality in a society the greater overall level of punishment is.

The new government has signaled that it wants to “have a dialogue” about the high imprisonment rates. But it has a duty to simply reject the new prison as being a product of all that has been wrong in this area for decades. The billions it will cost will be better spent anywhere else.

The union movement needs to take a lead on this issue. What Maori face is in many ways what all working-class people face from this system with an added twist of the knife

…which follows the reveal over the weekend of the worst kept secret in NZ politics…

…this contest is incredible and the hardest call I’ve ever had to consider.

Firstly, how lucky are the Greens to have two spectacular candidates compete in what will be a respectful and challenging contest?

I think both candidates are extraordinary and I think the Green Party membership have an enormous responsibility upon them to select a co-Leader who can lead at a time when so much of our Political debate is simply not presenting real alternative ideas and strategies to conquer the biggest challenges our species have ever faced.

So let’s look at the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and what possible consequences could occur and what possible considerations need to be made for specific outcomes.

The disastrous election result where they lost half their support in the space of 2 months wasn’t a reflection on the policy platform the Greens ran with, it was horrifically incompetent tacticians which didn’t foresee what would happen to Metiria when she courageously announced her welfare fraud.

What SHOULD have happened is Metiria would have already paid the amount owed before admitting it. By leaving it an open issue, the mainstream media tore Metiria to pieces.

Nandor posted some thoughts on the political philosophy of where the Greens need to move towards in the future and I think his targeting of new generation small and medium ethical business is very smart.

The truth for the Greens is that their dreams of being a 15% Party are dependent on the strength or weakness at any given time of Labour. The Greens vote was actually far softer than anyone suspected and with Jacinda now in charge of Labour, it is unlikely to woo much of that back.

So where do the Greens grow? It can’t be at the exclusion of social welfare policy, but it could be an extension of Green values into business.

The Greens could gain support from NZ’s small and medium ethical business community by promoting ethical tax breaks for those businesses. The Greens are all about allowing the market to decide by using state regulation to send the market signals. What better signal could you send the market than by supporting and promoting ethical business?

If small and medium sized business complied with independently tested environmental, ethical and sustainability standards then they should be eligible for a tax break for making that investment.

Promoting Green values into business doesn’t weaken the stance they take on poverty, it simply broadens their voter appeal and that’s what the Greens need to desperately be doing between now and the next election because the vote they lost to Jacinda won’t just walk back to them.

Taking a far more proactive approach to woo ethical business is smart but if core activists feel that’s eroding its social justice obligations the Greens could just be replacing leaving supporters with new ethical and small business voters.

That’s why they need Marama as the new co-leader.

Her activist credentials are better than anyone else, she is amazing on policy and connecting emotionally with voters when she does media and the inroads into beneficiary votes that she begun needs time to work.

Marama has the intelligence, leadership skills and vision to retain the social justice and environmental values while Shaw can woo small and ethical business.

Julie Anne Genter: Here’s what I think about Julie Anne.

I want to hands up acknowledge that I have at times been very critical of Julie Anne Genter, and while I stand by those criticisms, I want readers to appreciate that I have an enormous amount of respect for her and that previous criticisms are wiped clean for this.

I had the pleasure of touring NZ with Julie Anne trying the Save TVNZ7 public broadcasting tour. She is insanely intelligent and possibly one of the smartest people I know. Her understanding of complex civil issues is probably only eclipsed on the left by David Parker.

The extraordinary leadership she has already stamped upon the Ministry of Transport is remarkable, her championing of human rights in the Ministry for Women is exemplary and the speed with which she has managed to tame those Ministries is actually one of the most important skills a genuine leader can bring to the table.

Julie Anne Genter has the intellect to get a legislative agenda set up and implemented, there really aren’t that many progressive politicians who could do that.

While to the ‘right’ of the Party, that has to be understood within the context of the Green Party because being a ‘right winger’ in the Greens still makes you one of the most left wing Labour MPs ever. I have had an opinion about that in the past, (as noted above), but given the contexts we now live in, only the fiercest Trotskyite would begrudge her an ideological stance inches closer to the centre than their own.

She is possibly one of the most talented MPs the Left has in Parliament right now.

But.

Let’s also remember that other candidates could throw their hat in the ring.

WILDCARD: Remembering that any member could nominate themselves to be co-Leader, a wildcard could be a member with real star power coming forward. I don’t know if Lucy Lawless is a Green Party member, but someone should sign her up!

Imagine if Lucy Lawless put her hand up for co-Leader? If she ran on a platform of raising visibility to consistently demand better outcomes for the environment and children in poverty, she could easily convince Green members that the star pulling power of an environmental activist and actor to the Green cause would be far better than the right or left of the Party fighting. Lucy Lawless could be the unifying candidate for the Greens while being an enormous boon for James Shaw.

It would generate global news, building the Green brand and make environmentalism a populist movement rather than just a political vote.

In Part 2 – I’ll look at the ramifications and issues to consider behind each of the candidates in the current political landscape.

“SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES”, wrote Jerome Kern’s lyricist, Otto Harbach, in 1933. The tears well-up even faster, however, when your eyes are full of stardust. This latter affliction appears to have struck just about every journalist assigned to cover the Waitangi Day celebrations of 2018. Simon Wilson’s eyesight, in particular, seemed to be quite seriously impaired. How else to explain his confusing the arrival of Prime Minister Ardern with the Second Coming of Christ?

Which is not to say that the PM didn’t put on a very good show. The image of Jacinda quite literally serving the people (with bacon butties!) will do nothing to diminish her lustre in the eyes of most New Zealanders. When it comes to contriving the perfect photo-op, New Zealand’s youthful PM is a true professional. Her speechifying skills are also up there with the best. Whoever wrote her address from the porch of the whare runanga certainly knew what they were about.

All-in-all, as she settles back into the Beehive routine, the Prime Minister has every reason to adjudge her 5-6 days in the Far North an unqualified success.

The early images of any prime-ministerial term make a huge difference to the way he or she is perceived in the longer run. Think of John Key swigging beer from the bottle as Prince William barbecues their steaks. Or, going back even further in time, recall the image of “Big Norm” leading a little Maori boy across the Treaty Ground in 1973. Priceless shots. And now, the image of Jacinda, radiant among the bacon and sausages, must be added to this memorable slide show. Smoke gets in your eyes, indeed!

But, no matter how bulging Jacinda’s good-will account may have grown after Waitangi, the day-to-day exercise of raw political power will soon empty it out. On a multitude of fronts: international trade, health, housing, and poverty-reduction; her government’s mediocre performance (read John Minto’s excellent summary, here,) presents a stark contrast to its soaring and benevolent rhetoric.

Even the Labour-NZF-Green government’s grand gestures appear puny when placed alongside the grand gestures of its progressive predecessors. Compare Jacinda’s Waitangi Day barbecue with the gesture I describe in No Left Turn:

“Shortly after his election as Labour Party leader in 1961, Arnold Nordmeyer was asked by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation to recall for its listeners ‘My Most Memorable Christmas’. He spoke movingly of the first Labour Government’s decision, in December 1935, to advance the equivalent of an extra week’s relief payment to all the unemployed as a ‘Christmas Bonus’. That single act of state generosity, he said, sent ripples of hope and goodwill through thousands of destitute families and hundreds of cash-strapped communities. By Christmas its effects were evident across the whole of New Zealand.”

The newly-elected Labour Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, did something very similar in December 1972.

Not such an arresting image as Jacinda serving-up bacon butties to the Waitangi crowd, but I’ll wager Savage’s and Kirk’s gestures filled more bellies!

Perhaps, I’m being too harsh on the Prime Minister. Perhaps, in 2018, the public’s willingness to countenance giving away a whole week’s-worth of social assistance to every beneficiary in the country just isn’t there anymore. Perhaps, after 30 years of neoliberal brutality, we are no longer the caring and generous people we used to be.

Bluntly, my problem with Jacinda’s stardust is that, while it’s in the air, it’s difficult to focus on anything else. Amidst all the glitter it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that, apart from a handful of long-overdue inquiries, and a return to the status quo ante in employment law (read all about it on Richard Harman’s Politik website, here ) very little of any real substance has been done.

Unless, of course, you consider signing-up to the “Comprehensive and Progressive” TPP a singularly worthwhile achievement. Personally, after reading Professor Jane Kelsey’s analysis of the CPTPP, I can’t help feeling that the whole tawdry exercise should be understood in the spirit of The Who’s incomparable line: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

And, please, all you Labour apologists out there, don’t tell me that all this inaction is about the fiscal cupboard being bare.

How much would it have cost the Minister for Social Welfare, Carmel Sepuloni, to stand up in front of an appropriate audience (the PSA springs to mind) and deliver a speech in which she set forth the new government’s expectations of all those employed by the Ministry of Social Development? What, precisely, would have been the price of her instructing the people at Work and Income to treat their clients with a modicum of compassion and respect? Surely, a public reaffirmation of every citizen’s right to public assistance in times of hardship and affliction would not have bankrupted the Treasury?

Likewise, with the Minister of Labour, Ian Lees Galloway. Could he not loudly and publicly have proclaimed the government’s rock-solid commitment to protecting and expanding the right of every citizen to fair treatment in the workplace? Could he not have urged every New Zealander in a position to do so to join a trade union? And could not Jacinda, in the course of her negotiations with NZ First, have told Winston Peters that while she was prepared to compromise on many issues, on the question of workers’ rights – specifically the 90-day fire-at-will legislation – Labour was not for turning?

In her speech from the porch of the whare runanga, Jacinda urged Maori to hold the Labour-NZF-Green government to account if it failed to deliver on its promises of uplift and renewal. They were fine words. But, then, Jacinda has a thing for words. She is always promising to engage in “discussions” and “conversations” about the problems confronting so many New Zealanders. Ideally, however, political discussion and conversation is what happens after political action has been taken.

The “other half” of New Zealand is crying out to this government for brave deeds – not fine words. The last thing Jacinda needs to be remembered for is substituting stardust for substantive action.

I’ve noticed a new narrative line being developed in the mainstream media towards climate change.

The problem with deniers and minimisers was always going to be the actual weather. At some stage people would start looking outside their window at the extreme weather conditions and know in their bones that there was something terribly wrong.

So now we have the shrug and adapt narrative from the media.

Don’t get angry at these guys for holding up meaningful change…

…don’t demand that oil companies who knew for decades that climate change was a huge problem should be sued…

#ExxonKnew about climate change for decades, yet fueled a colossal denial machine to block any meaningful action to confront it. Now, thousands of us are fighting back.

…don’t get furious at the media who have been so slow to attach the climate change we are seeing to individual weather events or who see ‘balance’ as allowing climate deniers to share the stage with peer reviewed scientists.

Oh no, now we all just have to accept this climate change and adapt to it without ever acknowledging the role the powerful and the rich had in stopping any change.

This is as problematic as claiming the ‘market fundamentals‘ are somehow a touchstone against any wider issues.

There is truth in blaming the computers for their nano second trading that exacerbated the sell off because the majority of trading is now done at this millisecond speed, the problem is that because the majority of sell or buy bids are automatic algorithms, once these events take off they can’t stop, and these events will continue to occur as the treasuries market and interest rates being offered continue to offer better returns than the grossly over inflated stock exchange.

Blame the computers all you like, but also acknowledge that the 10 years of distorted markets due to trillions spent on quantitive easing has created a perfect storm where the AI of the computers becomes ruthless with the greed of the humans.

Terminal cancer patients, AIDS sufferers and those in chronic pain being arrested for choosing cannabis is all just one big joke for Chris.

You don’t expect a tobacco lobbyist to have anything close to resembling ethics but making criticism of his spineless u-turn on medicinal cannabis all a big joke is slap in the face to the tens of thousands of NZers who are made criminals by his gutless sophistry.

He’ll vote for you to commit legal suicide if you are in and pain and dying from the product he used to pimp for, but he won’t let you smoke a joint if you are in pain and dying.

I didn’t like him before this, but now I think he’s a malicious little creep whose much vaunted charm has all the cosmopolitan class of sheep drench Martini’s.

If this is the future leadership of the National Party, the National Party are in trouble.

This has set off speculation that somehow this is corrupt because, you know, Hooton is the Head of Slytherin House and the architect of the Death Star and no matter how many times he tries to rub genial and jovial Ben Thomas onto everyone. he still provokes the Imperial March theme song in the same way Steve Bannon or Trump does…

… questions were immediately asked after people noted that the Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry donated $150 000 to the National Party…

…the problem of course is that Inner Mongolia is a separate region and is not Mongolia the actual country.

Unfortunately for conspiracy theorists, the actual truth is far weirder than fiction. Hooton has been doing consultancy in Mongolia for a very long time and visited the country as a Uni student.

He has the requisite contacts and skills and basic interest in the region to gain this, but it is also manages to muzzle him in his criticism of the current Government because as a Honorary Consul he has to at least pretend to respect the Government of the day.

I for one believe Honorary Consul’s should be forced to spend at least 50% of the year in their Consul’s country.

If Mongolia ever want to make a weapon of mass destruction or enact neoliberal social policy that would amount to corporate feudalism – Matthew Hooton is their man!

The second is that at some point, the shear weight of market technicals in a nanosecond trading AI algorithm rigged Casino is going to crash the ‘market fundamentals’.

What we have isn’t a fully functioning market secure with all the fundamentals, we have a waiting time bomb.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/07/the-myth-about-market-fundamentals/feed/11So what the Unemployment rate really says is we are all working harder and longer for lesshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/07/so-what-the-unemployment-rate-really-says-is-we-are-all-working-harder-and-longer-for-less/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/07/so-what-the-unemployment-rate-really-says-is-we-are-all-working-harder-and-longer-for-less/#commentsTue, 06 Feb 2018 22:25:00 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96884

Employment grew more than expected and unemployment fell more than expected in the December quarter, despite lower business confidence and fears by some that the economy slowed during and after the election.

However, wage growth was relatively modest and broadly in line with expectations, reducing the risks that inflation and interest rates would rise sooner and faster than expected.

Statistics New Zealand reported the unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.5 percent in the December quarter from 4.6 percent in the September quarter after employment rose by 12,000 or 0.5 percent in the quarter. Economists had expected a slight tick up in unemployment to around 4.7 percent and had expected employment to rise by around 0.3 percent.

…let’s put aside the absurdity of working one hour a week meaning you are defined as employed, the realities here are that we have a work force working harder for bugger all wage growth.

Many workers are actually going backwards when you factor in rent rises and living costs that can’t be offset by property speculation.

It also highlights that the total number of under utilised workers, those working part time who want more work, number 343 000 workers.

There is little to cheer in these stats. We have a part time work force with a Precariat class who are at the whims of a brutal market while the wealthy plump up the medium wage.

There were lots of positives at Waitangi this week. There was also a lot of gloss, driven by hope (and perhaps primed by Shane Jones hospitality). Labour promised that it will be accountable to Maori. That promise faces a major test next week, as the Crown responds in the Waitangi Tribunal’s inquiry on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).

In a folksy video filmed in her kitchen last week and posted on facebook the Prime Minister assured us that the government ‘has an exemption that says it is always able to legislate and act to protect its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi and that can’t be challenged by other nations’.

Whoever scripted that text knows it’s not true.

Just days before, the chair of the Waitangi Tribunal inquiry into the TPPA set out four questions for the Crown to answer:

(a) when will the text of the revised TPPA (the “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership”) be available;

(b) what will be the effect of that text on the Crown’s ongoing engagement with Maori on the review of the Plant Varieties regime, and adoption of the UPOV 1991 convention on plant varieties (as required by the TPPA);

(c) what is the status of this new agreement and what issues in the TPPA claim remain live; and

(d) ‘when would be the appropriate time for the Tribunal to commence inquiry into the remaining substantive claims that have been filed with respect of the TPPA?’

The Crown (ie the Government advised mainly by MFAT) has to reply by next Thursday, 14th February.

There is a serious risk that the government’s Treaty-friendly will continue the dismissive approach National took to the Tribunal.

On the first question, National refused to even say whether there was a Treaty exception until the text was released. Trade Minister David Parker has said the TPPA-11 text will remain secret, presumably even from the Waitangi Tribunal, until after new agreement has been signed.

On the second question, National agreed to US demands that New Zealand adopts the UPOV 1991 convention on plant varieties, but secured a last-minute, bizarrely worded alternative of adopting a Treaty-compliant equivalent. This is an outstanding issue from the Wai-262 claim on traditional knowledge. Previous governments rejected adoption of UPOV 91, in part because it was inconsistent with te Tiriti. The new government has made no attempt to remove the obligation in the TPPA-11. It has not even been suspended. That means a new law has to be enacted within 3 years of the TPPA-11 coming into force; yet MBIE officials say the review of the current Act will take up to 5 years.

On the outstanding issues, perhaps the most volatile is the resolution of the water issue. Remember the new government was shocked to hear evidence from MFAT officials that its policy would have breached the TPPA.

The final point on the time line is perhaps the most incendiary. National deliberately truncated the time available to the Tribunal to present its first, urgent report by bringing forward the reporting date for the initial select committee hearing on the TPPA. That allowed it to introduce the implementing legislation earlier – which also meant the Waitangi Tribunal no longer had jurisdiction over the matter. The current government plans to sign the TPPA-11 on 8 March in Chile. It is likely to introduce the implementing legislation mid-year. That would terminate the Tribunal’s legal authority to complete the full inquiry before it has effectively resumed. Pushing ahead with the TPPA while the Tribunal is still assessing its Treaty implications would be a very bad start to a promised restoration of Labour-Maori relations.

I am rangatahi. I am five years out of school now, and it has only been in the last two that I have been meaningfully exposed to the need to fill the gaping void within my education concerning the human price of our individual and systemic failings to uphold te tiriti.

I immigrated to Aotearoa with my family when I was nine, having lived in Ireland and Canada as a young child, my parents likewise never having lived in New Zealand. I received my New Zealand citizenship when I was 16. According to the date of our residency papers, I wasn’t officially entitled to it yet, but according to the fact that I’d qualified to swim for my country internationally, I was obliged to obtain it (or similar recognition of official “belonging”). But these politics were little more than an ironic distraction from questions I was not brave enough to ask, but equally to which New Zealand was not forthcoming about answering to my satisfaction. What was the real meaning of “New Zealand citizenship”, after all? If there is a timeline for being “allowed” citizenship, if there is an oath one must swear to receive it, if there is a bond between you and your country where you are granted particular privileges because of this status, surely the systems are sending signals that citizenship is something earned, not to be taken lightly. But what was it that I was supposed to have learnt in the five years that must officially transpire between residency and citizenship? What was it that I would swear my allegiance to? In what ways would I have grown to now deserve this privileged status?

With the clock ticking between my arriving in New Zealand and being granted citizenship, I went to three schools and followed a mishmash of curriculums. In primary school, I thought the little reo we learned was fun and I wished we had studied more. For me, this is no surprising; I loved languages from a young age, and would go on to become fluent in Spanish and French. However, to think back on what I recall actually learning in primary school now, I am saddened and find it difficult not to feel resentful. To be sure, I am glad my teachers sewed the seeds of an interest in the nati”e tongue of tangata whenua in me. They taught us how to count to 20, some colours, and some command words like run and jump. The best part was the kapa haka group, where we learned whole waiata and haka. But those seeds were merely ready to lay dormant for a very, very long time. Where was the explanation of why we should care about te ao Māori? How on Earth were we, as ten-year-olds none the wiser, supposed to guess that behind these wrote translations of material concepts, lay a lexicon in the reo that upheld another form of worldview? Where were the explanations of what we were singing and chanting about in kapa haka? Where were the lessons on tikanga, on kaupapa, on manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga, whanaungatanga?

I do remember one lesson on the Māori understanding of how the Earth began with Ranginui and Papatūānuku. It was an important lesson but it was an isolated story that could belong to no wider narrative for me. By year 7, I could recite a pepeha, and I understood that we should acknowledge places, nature and our ancestors before ourselves. All this was interesting, but at the time, with no wider understanding of Māoridom, it was not enough, not even close, for me to begin to comprehend the mana and the values that we trample on as we continue to fail to uphold, and sometimes to actively resist upholding, the promises laid out in te tiriti o Waitangi.

But according to the New Zealand citizenship process, none of that matters. Even if I’d learned absolutely zero concerning te ao Māori,—and my parents, for instance, very nearly fit into this category—my right to citizenship, on paper, would remain perfectly in tact.

On to the next question, then: what was it that I would swear my Allegiance to? I obediently swore (or “solomnly affirmed”, to be precise) my allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and successors. I also agreed that I would “faithfully observe the laws of New Zealand and fulfil my duties as a New Zealand citizen”. Even at 16, I knew that my duties would surely go beyond my civic duty to vote in elections and to abide by written law, but I have no recollection of receiving any information on what the rest of them were.

It seems fundamentally wrong that the single most effective force encouraging me even to start educating myself on the colonial systems I unwittingly partake in has been the korero of thought-leaders like Moana Jackson, Māori activists like Julia Whaipooti, and Māori leaders within the blindness community like Chrissie Cowan. This feels wrong not purely due to the burden to educate that these people end up bearing, but also because the burden upon all of us becomes heavier the longer we leave genuine attempts at education on te ao Māori out of our schools, politechnics, universities, workplaces, churches and community groups. Ultimately, we are never going to imbue primary school children with a sense of responsibility to keep learning about a language if they see the reo as an isolated means of communication which we might borrow the odd word off in English but which is fundamentally the dominion of those Māori who can communicate fluently in it. The reo must be explained, first and foremost, as an educational tool and lens through which we can learn and teach about te ao Māori, and how this world has been wrong not by the fact of foreigners arriving in New Zealand and wanting to live here but by their practices of domination, their understandings of what it was to be “civilised” and systems which propped up and propagated those understandings. The reality of language education in schools, at least in Aotearoa from my experience is that, barring immersion programmes, the vast majority of students who do not take a language past around year 11 are highly unlikely to come out of school anywhere remotely near fluent. That, arguably, is a concern in itself, but surely a far more pressing worry is that many of us come out of school with no drive or sense of responsibility in particular to continue on the journey to figuring out what we, individually and collectively, can do to be tangata tiriti who can say that we are playing our part to respect our end of the bargain.

Upon gaining citizenship, I intellectually felt more justified than I had before about saying I was “from New Zealand” and calling myself a Kiwi. Citizenship comes with other privileges not afforded non-citizens too, like the ability to run for parliament or local government, but at 16, I had no particular idea of the mechanics of any of that. The internal question of what it meant to be a New Zealander, however, grew increasingly louder over time. Initially, when I would swim for my country overseas, the question of where I was from was easy—and in fact, rarely asked, as we were usually all dressed in our New Zealand paraswimming team uniform. In these cases, I was from New Zealand, full stop. I may have been taught to swim elsewhere, but my training, coaching and everything else to do with my swimming career most definitely took place in Aotearoa. I was part of New Zealand paraswimming and Paralympic teams, I was proud of that and I still am.

But as I got older and went overseas on exchanges to Spain and France to improve my language skills, I was asked very regularly indeed where I was from. I am a citizen of Ireland, Canada and New Zealand, I have strong family ties to all three countries, different parts of my identity reside in all of them, and I even have the privilege of having visited Ireland and Canada quite a few times since living there as a child. Nonetheless, I usually start off by saying that I’m from New Zealand. For the most part, I’m happy to do so; I have lived here for most of my life, many of my friends are friends I made here, many of my interests were nurtured here, and fortunately I have the security of knowing that my official papers saying I’m a citizen even testify to that. Naturally, this response often leads to questions about what it’s like to live in New Zealand, to grow up in New Zealand, to be Kiwi. My interlocutors are curious to know about the modus operandi of these people who live on the opposite side of the world, beyond the stereotypes of sheep, clean-green and rugby. Part of me is always questioning whether my New Zealand experience as an immigrant is valid enough to share or whether it’s the real deal—whatever that’s supposed to mean—and that is a kōrero for another day. What I want to emphasise now is that we don’t collectively seem to consider a sense of responsibility to keep learning about and nurturing te ao Māori as a prerequisite of being Kiwi, certainly not on paper but all too often, not in practice either. I wish that when people would ask whether I was Māori and say they’d watched the All Blacks haka and that they heard we were doing good things to keep the language alive, that I had the knowledge and confidence to go beyond explaining that I am pākeha and instead introduce them to the idea that te ao Māori extends far beyond a percentage of a census population, an endangered language and a war dance. It extends, I wish I would say, into a realm of people who value bonding and nurturing relationships with each other in all spheres of influence, who have practices that strive to respect the sacredness of Mother nature when she is most in trouble, who are individuals but who are also a collective, a people, who we can learn a lot from if only we could make sure that everyone knew why we need to make a lot of time to listen to them.

I’ll be the first to openly admit that I could have prioritised my own education on te ao Māori far more than I have, and that I am guilty in that regard. I take responsibility for that and I’m not proud of it. But I wish our systems of education, which must also extend beyond formal institutes of learning, might come to the table with this understanding too, so that it can be felt not just in the upper echelons of policy but in those who set curriculums, in all educators and eventually by us, the learners. I wish that the citizenship process had made it explicit to me that our duties as citizens extended, privilege permitting, to put ourselves in spaces, to find literature and to listen to tangata whenua in order to keep learning about, and try to uphold, te tiriti. And I wish that in Spain when I’d tell Spanish citizens in tapas bars that I’m from New Zealand, I’d be proud to know that I’m actively seeking to understand the history of my country, and act in a way that can honour the mana of its founding people, through to the tangata whenua of the present. I say tentatively that I think I have just begun on that journey now, several years out of high school and down largely to the kōrero of particularly articulate and tireless individuals, and of being privileged to witness and see the fruit of whanaungatanga in action. The knowledge that my understanding of the need to embark on this journey came out of such specific experiences, that it was by and large not founded within my education or my officially belonging to New Zealand, is terrifying because I know I am not an isolated case. We need to do our utmost to ensure all New Zealanders and immigrants are strongly urged to travel with us on this journey, and are provided with enough foundation in te ao Māori to do so.

Now I say that as someone who is a great fan of cunts, they are my favourite holiday destination, and I would never want to denigrate a place that I have such wonderful memories of, but the bluntness and crudeness of the word seems to perfectly describe Bob Jones.

…isn’t it great that the NBR has a paywall so that we don’t have to read this trash? I say build that paywall higher so we don’t have to hear Matthew Hooton as well.

Let’s just remind ourselves again as to why Māori have every reason to be pissed off with Pakeha on Waitangi Day?

Oh yeah, that’s right. We stole the vast majority of their land.

In a year when this was what we were seeing, a Prime Minister humbly feeding people at Waitangi Day…

…after making a speech like this…

…with juxtapositions like this…

…we could have been forgiven into believing that we were truly progressing, but thankfully Bob Jones has managed to drag us back into the late 1800s.

What a cunt, and not in a nice way.

PS – If your concern with this blog is my use of the c word, and not what Bob Jones wrote – you have your values wrongly wired.

UPDATE: Bob Jones has quit the NBR due to the NBR pulling his obscenely racist column from their online site. The Daily Blog has asked if Bob Jones will be joining Cameron Slater on Whaleoil. The Daily Blog has had no response from his office.

The grim reality that the wealth creation built since the GFC in 2007/2008 is an illusion that can only survive on record low interest rates and insane Quantitate Easing is starting to sink in with the Dow Jones following up the 666 point loss on Friday with a horror 1175 point plunge today.

The trading was so extreme that at one point, as the Dow Jones slumped 1600 points, it was 1% away from the entire stock exchange being shut down.

Once it breached 1000 points, the computers took over and started a mass sell off.

The moment when the market realised that Trumps grand clothes were an illusion will spin the global economy.

The meltdown will hit NZ with higher interest rates on house properties people won’t be able to afford while they watch their Kiwisaver accounts get mashed.

The black swans are all coming home to roost and are being driven in armoured cars.

Could the current members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Opposition leader Bill English, NZ First leader Winston Peters, Greens co-leader James Shaw, the Minister Responsible for the SIS and GCSB Andrew Little, and National MPs Amy Adams and Chris Finlayson please explain to the good people of NZ why the fuck a private corporation with deep links to human rights abusers is helping the NZ Police commit mass surveillance?

SPEAKING FROM THE PORCH of the whare runanga, overlooking the Waitangi Treaty Ground, Jacinda Ardern challenged Maori to challenge her. “[W]hen we return in one year, in three years, I ask you to ask of us ‘what have we done?’ Ask us what we have done to improve poverty … ask us, hold us to account.”

Jacinda asked Maoridom to score her government on how well – or how badly – it has addressed the big issues confronting Maori. She spoke encouragingly about New Zealanders coming to terms with their country’s history and the Waitangi Treaty’s pivotal role in shaping that history.

What she was careful not to do, however, was openly concede – as the Green Party leader, James Shaw did – that Maori had never ceded sovereignty to the British Crown. As Prime Minister, such a concession would immediately pitch New Zealand into a protracted and extremely bitter constitutional crisis.

The authority of the Crown in the Realm of New Zealand is absolute and indivisible. To preserve that authority, the settler government of Sir George Grey invaded the Waikato in 1863. Through the bitterest strife, the kingitanga movement came to understand that Her Majesty’s Government would never accept the idea of a sovereignty shared between Pakeha colonists and tangata whenua. The only sort of Maori king acceptable to the British Crown was the sort that wielded no power.

The notion that sovereignty was never ceded to the Crown by Maori arises out of the radical and highly tendentious historiography of the Waitangi Tribunal. For this particular historical interpretation of what transpired at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 to stand, however, it is necessary to ignore all the subsequent actions of the Crown between that date and the mid-1980s.

The construction and elaboration of the New Zealand State; the creation and interpretation of its laws; the legal status and inviolability of its citizens’ private property: all would be called into question if the idea that Maori sovereignty was never actually ceded to the Crown in 1840 was ever to be formally accepted by a New Zealand prime minister and her government.

Warm and inclusive though Jacinda’s speech from the whare runanga may have been, it was nevertheless the speech of a political leader in control of an absolute and indivisible state apparatus.

Was she promising to turn that apparatus to the urgent task of uplifting Maori New Zealanders out of poverty, homelessness and the bitter legacy of 178 years of colonial oppression? Yes, she was.

Was she proposing to unleash a constitutional revolution inspired by revisionist historians’ interpretation of the Waitangi Treaty? No, she was not.

Jacinda’s speech to the Iwi Leaders Forum at the beginning of her five-day sojourn in the Far North made clear her government’s intentions. In short, these were all about dealing with Maori material deprivation. Iwi leaders intent on pushing forward “cultural” issues – by which they mean constitutional issues – will very soon find they are pushing in vain.

Do the 13 Maori members in Labour’s caucus get this? Are they okay with this?

In all probability they are working very hard not to apprehend the dangerously contradictory currents into which Labour’s waka is drifting. All of them are eager to begin the process of uplifting their people. How many of them have thought through the medium-term consequences of this policy of empowerment is another matter altogether. What they will do when material uplift morphs into uncompromising cultural assertion is anybody’s guess.

The whole of Labour’s team is desperate to draw a line under the malign political effects of Helen Clark’s and Margaret Wilson’s Foreshore & Seabed Act. The demise of the Maori Party as a parliamentary force has raised hopes that this is, indeed, the case. But it will take more than Jacinda’s warm words to cause the structures of sovereignty and executive power by which all New Zealand prime ministers are constrained to disappear in a puff of stardust.

Clark and Wilson did not overturn the Court of Appeal’s judgement out of racially-motivated spite. They overturned it because to do otherwise would have been to catch the judgement’s loosened legal thread in their fingertips, pull on it, and watch the entire constitutional garment of New Zealand unravel before their eyes.

Jacinda’s intentions and those of her Maori caucus colleagues are unquestionably benign. But in political circumstances as fraught as these, good intentions are seldom enough. If, as the revisionist historians insist, Maori sovereignty was never ceded to the Crown, then the descendants of the Waitangi signatories’ determination to reclaim it; to exercise it; is entirely reasonable.

The question which such a response immediately poses, however, is as difficult as it is portentous: Can two peoples exercise equal sovereignty in an undivided state?

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/06/can-sovereignty-be-shared/feed/31100 days and the first broken promisehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/06/100-days-and-the-first-broken-promise/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/06/100-days-and-the-first-broken-promise/#commentsMon, 05 Feb 2018 19:08:24 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96814

I’d like to be able to offer well-deserved praise to the Labour-led government but their policy offerings from their first 100 days have been uninspiring.

I’m pleased to acknowledge the positive steps underway such as the Pike River re-entry, stopping the sale of 2,500 state houses in Christchurch, the investigation into abuse of children in state institutions and the mental health inquiry.

In each case the issues involved are central to the public interest and the new government is acting quickly and firmly to mop up the previous government’s failures.

In each case the public support was already assured for each announcement so there was no chance of serious kickback from National or its vested interests.

On the other hand, three crucial decisions of the new government will have a wider impact on the country and in each case Labour has failed the public interest in favour of vested corporate interests.

TPP:

Having done their best, before the election, to pretend they were opposed to the TPP and the secrecy around its negotiation, the new government has simply helped repackage the agreement with a few cosmetic changes to make it seem more palatable. It isn’t. It’s the same old bill of rights for foreign corporations to plunder our economy that its always been.

Child Poverty:

It was gobsmacking to hear the government’s target is to halve child poverty in 10 years. This is surely the lamest target of any Labour government on any issue in its history. But it’s also a meaningless target as Labour will have to win three more elections in a row to be able to meet it in any case.

This is the Prime Ministers signature policy. She tells us this is the reason she is in parliament. Pathetic.

Even the beneficiary-bashing Paula Bennett had reason to criticise.

“The Prime Minister committed her Government to reducing the number of children in material hardship over the next ten years by 70,000. Yet, over the last five years of the National government, the number of children in material hardship fell by 85,000.

“So this Government is promising to do less over a longer period of time than National did – in spite of its bold claims it would do better.

Housing New Zealand:

The new government’s decision not to turn Housing New Zealand back into a government department is their first broken promise.

Labour’s Phil Twyford told public meetings up and down the country for over a year that HNZ would change from a profit-driven, state-owned corporation into a government department focused on providing housing services to the most vulnerable New Zealanders. It was a bold policy – the one Labour housing policy which had the potential to be transformative for low-income families struggling with a thuggish corporate landlord.

Twyford tells us HNZ has changed its ways and is now working hard to help tenants. Oh please! HNZ staff on the ground have usually done their best for tenants but they have been forced to work under corporation policies where tenants were treated as the lazy bludgers National Party ministers told the country they were.

Low-income families saw this promised change to HNZ as the only bright spot in Labour’s housing policy in light of Twyford’s hopelessly inadequate promise to build a measly 1000 additional state houses each year when 41,000 New Zealanders have extreme housing need.

Again National had reason to criticise.

National’s housing spokesman Michael Woodhouse said this was “yet another backtrack from Labour.”

“It’s become more and more obvious that Labour’s house building plan involves doing exactly what the National Government was doing.”

In their first 100 days Labour has offered us “not-National” policies but little else – unless a Woman’s Weekly Prime Minister is considered in the common good.

The National Party is used to parachuting in Leaders. When the National Party values are as hollow with self interest as the Right’s are, National Party rank and file see parachuted in Leaders as simply a new marketing investment, they don’t get precious about not serving your time like the Left does, but there are limitations.

Steven Joyce is that limitation.

An outsider who was mates with Key, Joyce’s style of crony capitalism has locked out many on the Right who all get to collectively enjoy the public teat when their side is in.

This means Joyce has made an enormous amount of enemies.

Remember, Joyce went straight from candidacy into senior Cabinet Minister and wielded real power. While Nats accept parachuted in Leaders, they sure as Christ have no intention of losing the privileges and perks of power to someone as arrogant as Joyce.

Joyce has the favour of English so publicly demoting him would be a clear signal that the Collins/Bridges faction are now calling the shots.

Joyce is the canary in the coal mine for any Leadership challenge.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/05/why-steven-joyce-is-about-to-be-shot-in-the-face/feed/7Waitangi Day 2018 – The joy of a leader who understands the Treaty, Māori will vote Jacinda forever & how Iwi Leaders have to acknowledge the political rise of Urban Māorihttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/05/waitangi-day-2018-the-joy-of-a-leader-who-understands-the-treaty-maori-will-vote-jacinda-forever-how-iwi-leaders-have-to-acknowledge-the-political-rise-of-urban-maori/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/05/waitangi-day-2018-the-joy-of-a-leader-who-understands-the-treaty-maori-will-vote-jacinda-forever-how-iwi-leaders-have-to-acknowledge-the-political-rise-of-urban-maori/#commentsSun, 04 Feb 2018 16:10:25 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96452

Waitangi Day 2018 smells different doesn’t it?

It tastes different too.

No bitter ‘Māori privilege’ nonsense from Don Brash and his shallow racism.

No spiteful ‘Let’s have a NZ day so we don’t have to feel guilty about the Treaty’ whining from Newspaper editorials.

No constant media barking up of predictions of aggression and protest.

Jacinda’s desire to show Waitangi Day the respect it deserves with a 5 day tour visiting every Marae large and small alongside Ministers meekly lined up to do the BBQ cooking for Waitangi Breakfast is building a movement of aroha amongst Māori which will create a legacy relationship that is going to dominate Māori politics.

The electricity when she visits Marae is palpable and extraordinary. Her incredible ability to connect emotionally with people has generated a rapport amongst those packed Marae she’s visited in a way that will earn her devotion amongst voters while forgiving any shortcomings.

If she makes this 5 day tour an annual event she will build a following that will see Māori voting Labour because of their relationship with Jacinda for her entire political lifetime.

Her being pregnant is just the emotional cherry on the top, Māori in Northland have taken to Jacinda with nothing short of joy and her visiting everywhere has conjured up an excitement that will bind.

They will speak about Jacinda passing through for decades to come.

Look at this…

…Labour just won every heart and mind in the North – Jacinda is building a legacy relationship.

This personal relationship is going to cement Labour Party dominance of the Māori electorates leaving any resurgent Māori Party under a new leader like Dr Lance O’Sullivan with only the right for political movement because Labour will totally dominate the Māori vote on the general roll and the Māori roll.

With Jacinda building a huge reservoir of Māori voter support and the Māori faction inside Labour now one of the most powerful factions inside Labour, this puts the Iwi Leaders Forum, the Maori King and the Public Service all in a troubling position.

Many Māori live in urban areas and are not tribe affiliated. Their needs for better social services, jobs and the legacy issues created by colonialism trump Treaty deals which is offside to the goals of the Māori King or the Iwi Leaders Forum. With urban Māori having a far more powerful voice inside the new Government, those movements will need to see any extra resources making a dynamic impact on the poorest.

But there’s another segment who are about to face an existential threat – the Public Service.

Māori know first hand the structural racism of the social service providers who care more about the building of fiefdoms than the actual welfare of Māori. Already the Public Service is strangling Ministers with Ministerial suffocation but the new Māori faction aren’t going to accept that.

Māori social service providers offer a wealth of cultural initiatives that bring a holistic view to caring about people and the Public Service will either need to adapt to those new initiatives or they’ll face an ongoing battle with a Māori faction that knows damn well how the Public Service denigrate their people.

The crowds thronging Jacinda on every Marae suggest it’s a fight the Public Service are going to lose.

I make this following criticism of Te Reo posturing as some one who can’t personally speak Māori (I mangle the english language badly enough and I don’t want to mutilate that beautiful tongue) and who enrolled his daughter into a Te Reo immersion class because as a New Zealander, the treasure of Te Reo is a gift that is part of her birth right.

Here she is in last years Kapa Haka performance…

…so those things noted, for me the current level of Te Reo posturing from smug pronunciation on Radio New Zealand to Macron policing to Millennial’s swamping introduction to Te Reo classes as an aesthetic seems to miss the point and starts becoming middle class wank.

Is it good enough in 2018 to champion Te Reo when the structural injustice of colonialism is so prevalent and apparent?

Māori are 380% more likely to be convicted of a crime, 200% more likely to die from heart disease & suicide. Māori are paid 18% less and 34% leave school without a qualification. Māori at 15% of the population make up over 50% of the 10 000 prison population. They are arrested at a higher percentage, feature in the worst education and social stats and make up a huge proportion of those living in poverty.

After losing 95% of their land and economic base in less than a century and overcoming almost being wiped out by disease and muskets, Māori have been cheated by the Treaty.

I believe that the majority of white New Zealanders live in a constant state of wilful ignorance when it comes to racism in this country. The facts of how racist our system really is are glaring in the statistical outcomes, and have come under investigation by the UN but still we have the Don Brash’s of this country screaming Māori privilege.

The NZ Herald’s first editorial ever was calling on white settlers to go to war with Māori and remember their attempt to promote ‘non conflict Waitangi Day news’…

…it took 136 years to get an apology for Parihaka, who will apologise for the racist failures of NZ since the Treaty?

Knowing your Te Reo is simply cultural appropriation if it isn’t coupled with the same level of effort in cementing into place the power dynamics laid out in the Treaty

For me, I love the Treaty because of the relationship of responsibility it immediately sets up between the Crown and its people. I believe the sense of ownership in the Treaty needs to be expanded to all NZers and not just Māori because it sets out the obligations of the Crown to protect the rights of its people. We deserve as a nation to entrench the Treaty as the basis of our constitution so we can force Governments to protect our rights rather than strip us of them.

Pakeha want to gloss over the theft and confiscation of indigenous lands because it’s a shameful denial of the promise of a Treaty between two peoples and when you consider the paltry compensation that has been paid back to Maori via the Waitangi Tribunal, it’s a mere $1.4 Billion.

$1.4 Billion for confiscating the majority of NZ??? What is most egregious is that some Pakeha have the audacity to claim that pathetic reparation is a ‘gravy train’.

Hilariously enough, NZ is up for $6.8billion in damages from the Kim Dotcom case and if successful would mean he gets paid back over 4 times as much as has been paid out for the entire confiscation of the country.

We should be thankful that Māori have been so generous in their forgiveness of this atrocity. Watch the fury of pakeha having to mow their berms to appreciate how one sided our preciousness of ownership is in this country.

What does actual power sharing look like and how can Pakeha feel empowered rather than resentful?

One of the problems with NZ politics is that we have a unicameral Parliament, that means we just have one chamber with no upper house. This means NZs Parliament is one of the most powerful Parliaments in the world. It allows for legislation to be read straight into law and is one of the reasons why the neoliberal revolution was so ruthless and impossible to reverse.

I think one solution to the Waitangi Tribunal ruling is to consider a NZ Parliament Upper House that has 50-50 representation between Maori and Pakeha. If Sovereignty was never signed away, then the Government of today has a responsibility beyond paltry compensation for past injustices , it must provide real power sharing solutions.

Having a 50-50 Upper House with the power to delay legislation that was not in the best interests of the Nation when it comes to Treaty issues would stop Government’s from fire sales of national assets, prevent things like the Foreshore and Seabed legislation from becoming law and prevent water rights from benefitting corporations.

An Upper House would be seen as a guardian of the Treaty for the maintenance of public well being over private gain, it would show real power sharing and for Pakeha, it would represent a political body that protect their public interests as much as Māori interests.

Speaking Te Reo without also committing to actual political power seems to me to be middle class wank.

On 2 November last year – and still smarting from a colossal rebuff from NZ First – Bill English was unabashedly vindictive at losing out on coalition talks to form a fourth National-led administration;

“You should expect more tension and more pressure in the Parliament, and particularly through the select committee process. Because we are the dominant select committee party.

And that is going to make a difference to how everything runs – it’s not our job to make this place run for an incoming Government that is a minority.

You will get to understand that it is a minority Government with a majority Opposition, and the Greens as the support party. That is how we are going to run it…we have no obligation to smooth [Labour’s] path. None whatsoever.”

Just how difficult English intended for the new Coalition government has been made abundantly clear over the last three months. At every opportunity in front of a live radio microphone, tv camera, or any available passing set of ears, English has carped at every announcement and action undertaken by the Coalition.

A noticeable feature of this website is a lack any marker identifying it as a National Party construct. Aside from the authoriser – National’s General Manager, “G Hamilton”, the website shows no obvious affiliation to the Nats.

Not very honest of them, but it’s what we’ve come to expect from the National Party: deception to suit their agenda.

Speaking to Radio NZ’s Susie Ferguson, English complained bitterly that he had not been consulted over the Coalition’s government’s Child Poverty Bill;

“ Well we haven’t seen the bill yet. We’ve been offered a official’s briefing today. The day the Bill’s been introduced. So we’ve no ability to influence it. That’s not a good way to influence bi-partisan approach. It’s pretty limited I have to say. So we’ll have a look at it, ah, we want to see it’s more than symbolism…

[…]

Well, they haven’t gone about it in a very sensible way if they want concensus. First we’ve had no [unintelligible word] opportunity to influence the Bill…”

English desperately attempted to deflect the conversation to a purely fiscally-driven narrative;

“ This new government has used up all it’s spare cash according to it’s own limits. And they don’t have much ability actually over the next few years to do anything beyond the first of April this year.

[…]

New Zealand has a fantastic opportunity here. Sustainable surpluses, the ability to lift incomes at the bottom end, the ability to dig in and do the long term investment in dealing with long – with deprivation, and the government is doing it’s best to mess that up.”

However, English’s claim that he and his Party had had no opportunity for consensus-building on this critical issue affecting New Zealand was convincingly demolished that very same afternoon.

Not only had Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern approached National last year, seeking consensus and feedback from National – she had done it in writing;

.

.

[Image courtesy of Radio NZ]

There we have it: in black and white writing. And stamped with the Opposition Leader’s [currently Bill English – but subject to change very shortly] Office; 13 December 2017.

Prime Minister Ardern wrote to English requesting his support for the Coalition’s Child Poverty Bill – and seeking his feedback . She did everything feasible to engage English and his Party short of banging on his office door with her high-heels, demanding that he participate;

“ Damn you, Bill! Come out and engage with us!”

English’s obstructionism has either clouded his memory – or he was willfully not telling the truth. The former indicates that his memory is becoming unreliable. The latter, that he is a liar. Neither is a particularly comforting option.

“ Perhaps when dealing with the Opposition, I’ll be a little more careful to make sure I get a specific undertaking from them in future. ”

Indeed. Lesson learned.

Thankfully, a simple little thing like a letter has shown up Bill English to be either unreliable – or willing to engage in outright lying to smear the Coalition.

Postscript1

Bill English condemned the Coalition government’s decision to scrap National’s “Better Public Service” targets, set in 2012, and revised in 2017. The initial targets were set to:

Reducing long-term welfare dependence

A good start to life for mothers and babies

Reduce assaults and abuse of children

Improve mathematics and literacy skills and upskill the New Zealand workforce

Reducing crime

Better access to social housing

Improving interaction with government

The Labour-led coalition has decided to do away with National’s “Better Public Service” targets and instead opted to focus on Child poverty. This did not sit well with Bill English, who complained bitterly;

“ [The targets] meant that when New Zealand’s public servants turned up to work they knew exactly what it was they should be doing to improve lives and to do their jobs better – and they, along with the Government, were held to account because their results were measured.

It’s a step backwards to lazy, dumb Government.

The public service was starting to get good at digging into our hardest long term social problems: child abuse, family violence, serious criminal offending, and long term welfare dependency.

Instead, we are likely to see a shift to higher-level longer-term targets that apply to no one in particular and for which no one in particular can be held accountable and that’s not good enough.

I think there will be a lot of public servants who are putting their feet up around the country because now they don’t have to worry too much about achieving much or being accountable. But I think there will be even more public servants disappointed because they had a sense of purpose. ”

Prime Minister Ardern responded;

“ We will in the longer term absolutely be replacing those Better Public Service targets. Our view always has been that those targets didn’t give us the systemic change that we need for some of those big issues that the country faces. ”

Unfortunately for English, the most devastating critique of his so-called “Better Public Service” targets came not from a left-wing Prime Minister – but from one of his own Cabinet Ministers in July 2016.

When asked on TV3’s The Nation about National’s failure to move 65,000 people off the benefit within the next two years – one of the “Better Public Service” targets – then MSD Minister Anne Tolley replied;

.

.

“ It’s a very aspirational target.”

So Bill English is upset that targets – which are, at best, only “very aspirational” – are being dumped?

It is unclear why he is so wedded to targets when they are only “very aspirational“, according to one of his former Ministers. Minister Tolley was able to easily dismiss National’s “Better Public Service” targets with barely an explanation.

Aspirational is meaningless if not backed up by legislation and measureable standards.

Such as the Coalition’s Child Poverty Bill.

Perhaps Bill English should become “more aspirational“?

Postscript2

English’s pathological opposition to the Coalition’s Child Poverty Bill can be better understood when one understands that National policies have actively contributed to growing homelessness and increasing child poverty.

By 2016, that number had dramatically fallen to 61,600 (plus a further 2,700 leased) – a crucial shortfall of 7,400 properties.

In nine years, National sold off thousands of state homes – a policy that continued until a housing crisis forced families to live in over-crowded houses; run-down “boarding houses” garages, and cars.

National’s desperate attempt to stave off increasingly horrifying stories of hardship and poverty forced them to enter… the motel business;

.

.

If Mr English appears to have difficulty supporting the Coalition’s Child Poverty Bill, perhaps it’s because he knows his government is partly responsible for the current poverty-stricken state of the country today.

Those are amongst National’s legacies after nine years. Policies that benefitted the well-off; placated the comfortable Middle Classes; and made life harder for the poorest of our fellow New Zealanders.

His guilt must be so deep-seated that English is only able to deal with it by continually criticising those who are willing to clean up the mess left after nine years of National.

When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.

A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.

Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.

Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia”. But that wasn’t all.

[H]e brazenly navigated international hostility to his illegal regime. Then, having accepted an independent process for developing a new constitution, he rejected its outcome, fearing it threatened his hold on power and would restore much of what he had undone.

Bainimarama reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji.

Landslide victory
Then he was voted in as legal prime minister of Fiji with an overwhelming personal majority and a landslide victory for his fledgling FijiFirst Party in September 2014. He left his critics in Australia and New Zealand floundering in his wake.

Robertson is well-qualified to write this well-timed book, The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, with Bainimarama due to be tested again this year with another election. He is a former history lecturer at the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific at the time of Rabuka’s original coups (when I first met him).

He and his journalist wife Akosita Tamanisau wrote a definitive account of the 1987 events and the ousting of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s visionary and multiracial Fiji Labour Party-led government, Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), ultimately leading to his expulsion from Fiji by the Rabuka regime. He also followed this up with Government by the Gun (2001) on the 2000 coup, and other titles.

Robertson later returned to Fiji as professor of Development Studies at USP and he has also been professor and head of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, as well as holding posts at La Trobe University, the Australian National University and the University of Otago.

He has published widely on globalisation. He is thus able to bring a unique perspective on Fiji over three decades and is currently professor and dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.

Since 2006, Fiji has slipped steadily away from Australian and New Zealand influence, as outlined by Robertson. However, this is a state of affairs blamed by Bainimarama on Canberra and Wellington for their failed and blind policies.

Even since the 2014 election, Bainimarama has maintained a “hardline” on the Pacific’s political architecture through his Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) alternative to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus trade deal.

‘Turned their backs’
While in Brisbane for an international conference in 2015, Bainimarama took the opportunity to remind his audience that Australia and New Zealand “as traditional friends had turned their backs on Fiji”. He added:

How much sooner we might have been able to return Fiji to parliamentary rule if we hadn’t expended so much effort on simply surviving … defending the status quo in Fiji was indefensible, intellectually and morally.

For the first time in Fiji’s history, Bainimarama steered the country closer to a “standard model of liberal democracy” and away from the British colonial and race-based legacy.

“Government still remained the familiar goose,” writes Robertson, “but this time, its golden eggs were distributed more evenly than before”. The author attributes this to “bypassing chiefly hands” for tribal land lease monies, through welfare and educational programmes no longer race-bound, and through bold rural public road, water and electrification projects.

Fiji’s cast of coup leaders. Image: Coup 4.5

Admittedly, argues Robertson, like Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (Fiji’s prime minister at independence and later president), Rabuka and Qarase, “Bainimarama had cronies and the military continues to benefit excessively from his ascendancy”. Nevertheless, Bainimarama’s “outstanding controversial achievement remains undoubtedly his rebooting of Fiji’s operating system in 2013”.

Robertson’s scholarship is meticulous and drawn from an impressive range of sources, including his own work over more than three decades. One of the features of his latest book are his analysis of former British SAS Warrant Officer Lisoni Ligairi and the role of the First Meridian Squadron (renamed in 1999 from the “coup proof” Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit – CRWU), and the “public face” of Coup 3, businessman George Speight, now serving a life sentence in prison for treason.

His reflections on and interpretations of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Board of Inquiry (known as BoI) into the May 2000 coup are also extremely valuable. Much of this has never before been available in an annotated and tested published form, although it is available as full transcripts on the “Truth for Fiji” website.

‘Overlapping conspiracies’
As Robertson recalls, by mid-May, “there were many overlapping conspiracies afoot … Within the kava-infused wheels within wheels, coup whispers gained volume”. Ligairi’s role was pivotal but BoI put most of the blame for the coup on the RFMF for “allowing” one man so much power, especially one it considered ill-equipped to be a director and planner’ (p. 140).

The BoI testimony about the November 2000 CRWU mutiny before Bainimarama escaped with his life through a cassava patch, also fed into Robertson’s account, although he admits Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka’s ANU doctoral thesis is the best account on the topic, “Sacred King and Warrior Chief:The role of the military in Fiji politics”.

It was a bloody and confused affair, led by the once loyal [Captain Shane] Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated, seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama.

The book is divided into four lengthy chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion – 1. The Challenge of Inheritance about the flawed colonial legacy, 2. The Great Turning on Rabuka’s 1987 coups and the Taukei indigenous supremacy constitution, 3. Redux: The Season for Coups on Speight’s attempted (and partially successful) 2000 coup, and 4. Plus ça Change …? on Bainimarama’s political “reset”. (The Bainimarama success in outflanking his Pacific critics is perhaps best represented by his diplomatic success in co-hosting the “Pacific” global climate change summit in Bonn in 2017.)

One drawback from a journalism perspective is the less than compelling assessment of the role of the media over the period, considering the various controversies that dogged each coup, especially the Speight one when accusations were made against some journalists as having been too close to the coup makers.

One of Fiji’s best journalists and editors, arguably the outstanding investigative reporter of his era, Jo Nata, publisher of the Weekender, sided with Speight as a “media minder” and was jailed for treason.

However, while Robertson in several places acknowledges Nata’s place in Fiji as a journalist, there is no real examination of his role as journalist-turned-coup-propagandist. This ought to be a case study.

Robertson noted how Nata’s Weekender exposed “morality issues” in Rabuka’s cabinet in 1994 without naming names. The Review news and business magazine followed up with a full report in the April edition that year, naming a prominent female journalist who was sleeping with the post-coup prime minister, produced a love child and who still works for The Fiji Times today.

Nata then promised a special issue on the 21 women Rabuka had had affairs with since stepping down from the military. However, after Police Commissioner Isikia Savua spoke to him, the issue never appeared. (A full account is in Pacific Journalism Review – The Review, 1994).

NBF debacle
Elsewhere in the book is an outline of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) debacle that erupted when an audit was leaked to the media: “In fact, the press, particularly The Fiji Times and The Review, were pivotal in exposing the scandal.” Robertson added:

The Review had earlier been threatened with deregistration over its publication of Rabuka’s affair[s] in 1994; now both papers were threatened with Malaysian-style licensing laws to ensure that they remained respectful of Pacific cultural sensitivities and did not denigrate Fijian business acumen.

The bank collapsed in late 1995 owing more than $220 million or nearly 9 percent of Fiji’s GDP – an example of the nepotism, corruption and poor public administration that worsened in Fiji after Rabuka’s coups.

On Coup 1, Robertson recalls how apart from Rabuka’s masked soldiers inside Parliament, “other teams fanned out across the city to seize control of telecommunication power authorities, media outlets and the Government Buildings”.

But there is little reflective detail about Rabuka’s “seduction” of the Fiji and international journalists, or how after closing down the two daily newspapers, the neocolonial Fiji Times reopened while the original Fiji Sun opted to close down rather than publish under a military-backed regime.

About Coup 3, Robertson recalls “[Speight] was articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according to some journalists. They felt that this intimate media presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone“ (see Robie, 2001).

On the introduction of the 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, which still casts a shadow over the country and is mainly responsible for the lowest Pacific “partly free” rankings in the global media freedom indexes, Robertson notes how it was “Singapore-inspired”. The decree “came out in early April 2010 for discussion and mandated that all media organisations had to be 90 percent locally owned. The implication for the News Corporation Fiji Times and for the 51 percent Australian-owned Daily Post were obvious”.

The Fiji Times was bought by Mahendra Patel, long-standing director and owner of the Motibhai trading group. (He was later jailed for a year for “abuse of office” while chair of Post Fiji.) The Daily Post was closed down.

Facing a long history of harassment by various post-coup administrations (including a $100,000 fine in January 2009 for publishing a letter describing the judiciary as corrupt, and deportations of publishers), The Fiji Times is heading into this year’s elections facing a trial for alleged “sedition” confronting the newspaper.

In spite of my criticism of limitations on media content, The General’s Goose is an excellent book and should be mandatory background reading for any journalist covering South Pacific affairs, especially those likely to be involved in coverage of this year’s general election in Fiji.

For me, summer holidays are an opportunity for a mental health reset. A chance to escape Auckland and get back to nature. That entails a media diet – I try to ration exposure to mainstream and social media – even though they’re one and the same. I get out of Facebook, and into real books, swap a video live stream for a real life freshwater stream.

This summer one of the books I read was ‘Our Inner Ape’ by primatologist Frans de Waal. De Waal researches animal behaviour, and a recent book was ‘Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? He concludes we probably aren’t. Check out his Facebook page, for insight into the amazing wondrous diversity of the living world.

In ‘Our Inner Ape’, Frans de Waal looks at the behavioural similarities and differences between humans and our closest non-human relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. They’re both equally closely genetically related to us, although chimpanzees are more famous; they starred in Planet of the Apes, whereas bonobos only featured once. They have different ways of negotiating and resolving social conflict. Chimpanzees are carnivorous and live in a patriarchal hierarchy. Often they resolve conflict through collusion, allegiances and violence.

Bonobos on the other hand, are matriarchal, peaceful, and mediate social intercourse, with sexual intercourse – they make love not war. Unstigmatised sexual contact is part of many social situations. In bonobo societies, mutual sexual stimulation is an important part of showing affection, improving bonds, and resolving societal issues.

De Waal says humans have the facets of both the chimpanzee and the bonobo, and that to sustain life in the long term we should try to adopt the peaceful way of the bonobo, more than the recourse to violence of the chimpanzee. De Waal also discusses the idea that despite our best intentions, we humans are more emotional, than rational and this drives a lot of our beliefs, responses and behaviours. Innate primal, primate, urges are the default.

After spending time in campgrounds of primal young travellers and holiday makers, I’d suggest there’s quite a bit of the bonobo running through adolescent brains. And the ongoing antics of Trump indicate a lot of chimpanzee, though that’s an offence to any ape.

But while I was on my media diet enjoying the fresh air, great sights and small towns of New Zealand, with thousands of other travellers, a couple of major media announcements got through. Both had me thinking about the ways of the (hu)man, the ways of bonobo and chimpanzee, and politics. But they both reflected deeper issues that should be of interest to any monkey with a higher brain. The events in question were the announcement of British Prince Harry’s engagement to American actress Meghan Markle, and the less anticipated announcement of the pregnancy of our new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Royal prerogatives represent all that’s wrong with the class system and unequal wealth in society – today and historically. The wealth of royalty are spoils of feudalism and capitalism, and contrary to the class interests of those masses of citizens who adore them. Instead the poorest and most oppressed seem to love the royalty the worst.

I saw a story about Prince Harry and sparkly Ms Markle on walkabout in Cardiff. Throngs of emotional women held outstretched hands toward her, bringing handmade gifts and flowers. People cried. One woman, when interviewed by the media, said it was an overwhelming experience, a lifetime highlight for her to meet Meghan, “She’s done so much!”. In another image, on another walkabout (?), commoners were pressed behind steel fence barricades, and a smartly dressed woman, someone of sufficiently high status to be allowed on the ‘royal’ side of the fence, was genuflecting, down on one knee in a full curtsey, kissing Meghan Markle’s hand. So far all I can see that Meghan Markle has ‘done’ is ‘tame wild Harry’ and acted in a tv series (which I haven’t actually seen), and yet has improved the standing of the royals in the hearts of those with least. But she’s got glossy hair and a nice smile, and she’s got her prince, so the royal subjects all rejoice. Unlike Kate Hawkesby who seems to have some bitchy competitive (chimpanzee) thing going on in her column about Meghan Markle, my concern is with royalty, the class system, inequality, and how shiny hair and a shiny smile can excite the support of the oppressed, to their very oppressor.

New Zealander’s reactions to Jacinda Ardern’s pregnancy took much of the same basic emotional response. What were once serious newspapers, exclaimed about the ‘delightful’ news and speculated on the ‘baby bump’. Expressions like this make me gag. Not because of the baby but because this sort of twittering comes straight from women’s magazine headlines, now common parlance.
To be fair though, wasn’t it a good story! It’s perfect for the women’s magazines. Such a well-crafted narrative: “We thought we couldn’t (conceive), and then we did!”. “Clarke will be a stay at home dad, while I’ll be Prime Minister and a mum”. Political commentators suggest Jacinda’s scored a coup. The Prime Minister’s pregnancy represents a compelling political advantage– all those wholesome photo opportunities. – A growing tummy, the radiant mother, the bonny baby, all the baby’s milestones caught on camera. The perfect modern family. The perfect political symbol – a celebrity couple, so clean cut. Such glossy hair. He with the nice square jaw, their nice white shirts, and their modest Point Chev home. Who cares about policy? There’s a baby on the way! It’s a miracle birth! Unheralded! Jacinda is Superwoman even! Courageous, against the odds, calling out all those who would dare challenge a woman’s right to have a baby, by actually having one.

But seriously, how heartening, genuinely, a new, loved and wanted baby is. How encouraging for Parliament as an institution to be reformed by women of the House, of child bearing age, actually bearing children.

Commentary suggests political and social life will be transformed because for only the second time in democratic history, a country’s leader is pregnant. Women and men will be newly liberated within domestic and employment relations, traditional power relations will be inverted. It’s an end to male domination and patriarchy. Jacinda has already said the Labour-led Government will be an empathetic one, and there’s nothing more representative of compassion and caring than the pregnant mother. Could we be seeing the emergence of our latent bonobo faculties expressed at highest political level – matriarchal, caring, empathetic, conciliatory instead of conflictual?

Rather than judging our Prime politician by her ability to get pregnant, 100 days in, it’s appropriate to judge her and the new Government on their achievements. By their works we shall know them and all that. The Party’s 17 point, 100 day plan, indeed, allows for a higher level of transparency and accountability of just how are things tracking, as will the proposed Budget performance measures. Performance on the 100 day action targets have been analysed by the media (and reflected in supportive polls) and generally scored highly. Labour set goals, and can already tick them off. First year’s fee free tertiary study, the Healthy Homes Guarantee for renters, the ban on foreign investors in existing houses, the resumption of NZ Superannuation Fund contributions, the Pike River Recovery agency, the Mental Health Inquiry, measures of child poverty in the Budget, a stop to the sell off of state houses, improved Working for Families, Paid Parental leave and the Winter Fuel payment – many of these agenda items take a step toward improving the lives of many people, even if just by partly undoing worse changes inflicted upon New Zealand by National. And even if they don’t address the cause of the problem which is an unjust and unequal system.

But the Labour Government has so far achieved what it said it was going to do – even if it was a commitment to do something later, or just a commitment to look into something, to set up an inquiry or to start a process to consider something.

In fact, the timeframes for actually delivering on those inquiries and plans takes us nicely up to the next election, or the next, or in the case of halving child poverty, three electoral cycles away, another decade, another generation.

Poverty, inequality and environmental damage are not just matters of budget, but of policy made along the way. It’s early days, but on more substantive matters of sovereignty, the environment, the division of private and public wealth, and workers’ rights, so far, not so good, in critical assessment.
Like a cartoon on Facebook says, Labour worked really hard to change the TPP, and fair enough, now it has a different name. But the rebranded CPTPP still creates fears in the minds and hearts of many. Labour are being accused of hypocrisy for campaigning against National’s TPP but supporting a secret, uncertain deal that in opposition they may well have continued to criticise. The Prime Minister suggested people aren’t very concerned about the CPTPP now that the US has withdrawn. I’d suggest there’s still anger and fear, and feelings of disappointment and betrayal.

The jury is out on the real weight of the labour relations changes from the new Government too. The resumption of mandatory meal breaks must be a relief to those exploited on factory floors, such as meat workers, but meanwhile they continue to fight for the right for secure and safe employment through the courts. The hire and fire rule has been changed so little as to make it meaningless. (Doesn’t apply to most businesses, and those it does apply to can still hire and fire, but have to provide a reason). Labour reckon they couldn’t tighten things up because it was a New Zealand First bottom line to retain the 90 day trial and fire period. That just shows that disappointingly, it wasn’t a bottom line of Labour.

We have a long, long way to go before we’re back where we were before National took office, let alone before Labour’s neo-liberal blitzkrieg on state and society from 1984. Measuring poverty even against Treasury’s changing goal posts counts for little, at a time when it has been revealed that 1% of the New Zealand population own 30% of the wealth, and 30% own only 1%. Business is clearly still setting the agenda even if Labour aren’t as bad as the Nats. Today, we have a party wearing a mask of kindness according to Sue Bradford, but sadly also, the Party is wearing the mask on behalf of exploiters and corporates, some of whom pay no tax in New Zealand despite record profits.

But in the meantime, it’s all being played very well. And the 17 policy goals are steps of progress it would be churlish to ignore. There’s good grace, humour and public displays of empathy from Jacinda, even if the rest of the team are comparatively wooden. The decision to have MPs handing out kai at Waitangi, is an inspired one. It creates an impression of humility in MPs, has good profile, public contact and exposure, and press. Soon we should expect Jacinda to hug beggars and bathe the feet of lepers. Being pregnant and having a baby will be the next best thing. Some in the media have already gushed that Jacinda’s is our ‘own royal baby’. There’s living-saint type beatification going on among devoted supporters.

Despite the Prime Minister’s pregnancy, this government represents a modified status quo and change will be incremental and conservative (note the debate and votes on medicinal marijuana), and in many instances Labour will be more aligned with National than the Greens. For better or for worse the Greens are shackled to that slow moving conservative wagon through their role in Government. But Jacinda would be naturally hoping to build trust for longer term reforms as well. Building on the current pace, trust and confidence, over a three-term cycle, there may be some better amelioration of the excesses of capital, the state of our planet and inequality, though not much really on a background of business as usual. Pregnant or not, Jacinda’s not superwoman, competent and as intuitive a politician as she is; she’s not incapacitated either. But she’s not a miracle worker that’s required to clean up this mess.

But politics is like the tribalism of primate societies. We have strong bonds to in-groups and oppose others. Labour loyalists (the royalists?) are in love. And they’re angry at critics. We’ve got the chimp and the bonobo going on. Some of it is irrational. Those upset about what they see as a betrayal over Labour’s support for the (CP)TPP, the fishing industry, extractive industries, the racing industry, are instead accused of being traitors. There’s an implication that we should never question the motives or practices of a centre-left government, now we finally have one. Even if it is more centre, than left.
The score card is mixed. The new Labour-led government is like Jacinda’s physical state – conceived in a honeymoon, with high expectations, with delivery pending.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/03/primates-politics-the-princess-and-the-pm/feed/12Winston does right thing – drops case against journalists, targets National Party scumhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/winston-does-right-thing-does-case-against-journalists-targets-national-party-scum/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/winston-does-right-thing-does-case-against-journalists-targets-national-party-scum/#commentsFri, 02 Feb 2018 04:49:01 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96708Winston has done the right thing by dropping his case against the Journalists involved in publicising leaks about his super overpayment.

It is unacceptable for a politician, let alone a Minister or the Deputy Leader of a Government to attack journalists for doing their job.

It doesn’t matter what they revealed, that’s their job, they have special rights and privileges to protect their sources no matter how distasteful this leak was.

The issue now focuses on the National Party Scum who were more than happy to use private information to attack Winston with.

It turned out that the Chief of Staff was then told of this, other Minister’s were then informed and surprise, surprise someone leaked to Lloyd Burr.

National say they have no idea how this possibly damaging information was amazingly leaked just before the election.

Really?

This is a Government who colluded with the Secret Intelligence Service months before the 2011 election to falsely smear Phil Goff, does anyone honestly think they wouldn’t breach every rule of privacy to smear Winston Peters?

If this Government was prepared to collude with the state spies to destroy a political enemy, they wouldn’t blink twice about releasing information like this.

All power to Winston’s arm in attacking the Nats for such a contemptuous breach of privacy.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/winston-does-right-thing-does-case-against-journalists-targets-national-party-scum/feed/6When Hooton is going public that means the National Party Leadership Coup is in full effecthttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/when-hooton-is-going-public-that-means-the-national-party-leadership-coup-is-in-full-effect/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/when-hooton-is-going-public-that-means-the-national-party-leadership-coup-is-in-full-effect/#commentsFri, 02 Feb 2018 02:56:34 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96703

Hoots has gone public in the NBR with his musings on the National Party Leadership Coup…

…this is kinda hilarious for a whole bunch of reasons.

Hooton is pretending to be some kind of passive observer to all of this when the reality is he is up to his armpits.

His candidate/mate/Manchurian candidate is Simon Bridges. Bridges is being lined up as the Deputy to Judith Collins Leadership.

Collins/Bridges have the numbers, all that is being debated is how to kill off Bennett and Joyce whom are hated.

Pundits pointing to the great Polling National have (going higher than they polled on election day in both polls) as reasons why Bill will survive utterly misread the vibe inside National.

Inside National, people are furious they were cheated out of winning, those climbing Poll numbers are simply aggravating that anger, not appeasing it.

Collins/Bridges would bring together the most angry and powerful factions of the National Party including the elevation of Hooton and Slater into Princelings of the dark arts.

This collaboration alone has the ability to generate a level of dirty politics that goes beyond anything this country has ever seen.

Remember the claim that Slater and Jordan Williams were attempting to take out Colin Craig so they could take over the Conservative Party? That’s because there is still a solid 3% vote out there that is Conservative vote and if an electorate MP from National were to suddenly step aside to become the new Leader of the Conservative Party and get run unchallenged in their former electorate and bring in 3% off the coat tail function of MMP, National + Conservatives + ACT could easily be the Government in 2020.

National hierarchy are terrified of Collins being leader because she is completely uncontrollable and they are frightened of what she would do with the power. The clock however is ticking on Bill’s leadership and the longer he stays the more likely leaks he doesn’t want coming out start coming out on Whaleoil.

The dice are loaded and the hard Right within National is rising. With economic meltdowns looming, the stage is set for the Crusher to crush.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP and his White House staff are convinced America’s “Deep State” is out to get them. They’re probably right.

Regardless of their ideological leanings, a persistent base-note of paranoia thrums through the heads of most politicians. In the case of the Trump Administration, however, that drumbeat is growing faster and louder with every passing day. Making it stop is fast becoming a POTUS obsession.

It’s easy to imagine how vulnerable a political leader must feel when it becomes clear that the individuals and institutions charged with protecting the integrity of the state are, simultaneously, being encouraged to gather information about the private life of the head-of-state. Knowing that was happening could easily drive a person onto Twitter in the early hours of the morning!

If New Zealand even has a “Deep State”, then it is unlikely to be a very big or a very scary one. Our population is simply too small for big secrets. Always, there’s someone who knows someone, who heard it from someone who was/is directly involved. The fear of being exposed publicly is almost always enough to prevent those institutions best equipped to undertake covert surveillance of New Zealand’s political leaders – the SIS, the GCSB, the NZDF and the Police – from even considering such a risky mission.

But, what if the surveillance and the reporting-back was being undertaken unofficially? What if a group of renegade public servants, motivated out of ideological conviction – or baser considerations – decided to act independently, outside the chain-of-command? What if, having seen their superiors escape any kind of meaningful official reprimand for engaging in unethical conduct, they decided to embark on a little free-lance politicking of their own?

Suppose, to illustrate these hypothetical questions, we imagine a small, democratic nation governed by a young, socialist, prime-minister. Like her immediate predecessors, this young prime minister is protected by a group of specially-trained and armed police officers.

These bodyguards are, naturally, sworn to keep secret everything they see and hear pertaining to the public and private life of the politician under their protection. Because, of course, anyone spending so much time in such close proximity to another person is bound to witness all kinds of behaviour; overhear all manner of exchanges; which, if wrenched from their context and passed on to an interested third party, could give rise to the most acute political and personal embarrassment.

Now, let us further suppose that a number of this young prime minister’s bodyguards, being strong supporters of the conservative political party which she and her left-wing allies have only recently supplanted, decided to “help” her conservative opponents by feeding them detailed information of a private, personal and politically highly-sensitive character.

Obviously, our hypothetical prime minister’s hypothetical opponents could not use this information publicly without betraying its source. Nevertheless, the intelligence in their possession would likely prove to be of enormous benefit to them, both strategically and tactically. All knowledge is power: and the acquisition, by your enemies, of knowledge you’d rather they did not possess, and of whose unauthorised transfer you remain entirely ignorant, could – hypothetically – give them a great deal of power indeed.

Not that anything as dangerous as the scenario sketched-out above could possibly unfold in corruption-free New Zealand. Our happy South Pacific democracy is simply too small for really big secrets, and our public servants too big-hearted to pass on its small and private ones to unauthorised persons.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/hypothetical-questions/feed/22Pay the full Working for Families package to all low-income families on April 1https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/pay-the-full-working-for-families-package-to-all-low-income-families-on-apil-1/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/pay-the-full-working-for-families-package-to-all-low-income-families-on-apil-1/#commentsThu, 01 Feb 2018 20:56:13 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96697

The government has announced goals to halve child poverty in three critical measures over the next decade. These are realistic and achievable targets that will be welcomed.

However, it is wrong for the government to delay the introduction of their boost to working for families for a further five months until July.

WFF is being underfunded by an estimated $700 million a year as a consequence of the steady decline in real value that occurred under the National government. The planned boost in July only restores $500 million of the cuts.

The government also plans to increase the abatement rates from 20 to 25% after earning $42,700. A family earning $5000 above the threshold could lose up to 84% of the additional income in taxes and abatements! At the very least, the increase in the abatement rate should be stopped.

The full entitlement of the WFF package should also be extended to all low-income families. This would boost the incomes of 200,000 children in the worst poverty at a cost of another $500 million.

The government’s goals of halving child poverty can’t actually be achieved without this change happening sooner or later.

Discriminating against low-income families not in work has been a festering sore that needs to be lanced. It was a product of the previous Labour government maintaining the “Third Way” ideology associated with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton that differentiated between the deserving and undeserving poor. It has no place under this government and the commitments that have been made to halve child poverty in a decade.

We can afford it now without any increased taxes as I explained last week.

The system is broken. We need a return to universal entitlements that is recouped with taxes on high incomes and accumulated wealth.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/pay-the-full-working-for-families-package-to-all-low-income-families-on-apil-1/feed/4Pike River re-entry, Royal inquiry into state abuse and Child Poverty legislation – this is what political leadership looks likehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/pike-river-re-entry-royal-inquiry-into-state-abuse-and-child-poverty-legislation-this-is-what-political-leadership-looks-like/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/pike-river-re-entry-royal-inquiry-into-state-abuse-and-child-poverty-legislation-this-is-what-political-leadership-looks-like/#commentsThu, 01 Feb 2018 18:43:22 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96674

…this is what real political leadership looks like and while there are concerns and legitimate criticisms to be made on some of these issues and we should voice those concerns, it is still an incredible achievement in 100 days.

However.

While this is all a great start, we still have a neoliberal welfare system filled with horrendous and awful human beings who enjoy the humiliation and domination of others. We still have WINZ staff who are crucifying the poor, we still have a culture of hunting down beneficiaries like dogs, we still have draconian welfare policy, renters with few rights, counter productive Prison policy, greedy Landlords, mass surveillance abusing Police, SIS and GCSB, entire generations locked out of home ownership and a Human Rights Review Tribunal that doesn’t have the funds to hold the State to account.

We have 370 000 kids living in poverty, 41 000 New Zealanders homeless, over 10 000 imprisoned, over 600 official suicides with suggestions it could be 3 times higher, 550 000 suffering hardship and 1600 dying annually from cold houses. Those numbers aren’t changing today or tomorrow and while the new Government has promised hope in the future, those NZers need change now.

That is the true test of the new Government, and currently they don’t have a public service that can do anything other than harm.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/02/pike-river-re-entry-royal-inquiry-into-state-abuse-and-child-poverty-legislation-this-is-what-political-leadership-looks-like/feed/4Why the latest political poll is not great news for the Lefthttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/01/why-the-latest-political-poll-is-not-great-news-for-the-left/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/01/why-the-latest-political-poll-is-not-great-news-for-the-left/#commentsThu, 01 Feb 2018 08:39:11 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96669

Many were jumping with glee over the Newshub first poll of the year.

I think that joy is misplaced because the Poll is not great news for the Left. Like the last Q+A poll of 2017 (which changed polling methodology to one that should favour voters of the Left) this new one should concern us because in both Polls, National went up.

Thats right, National are still climbing in the Polls, they aren’t going down.

That should be bloody scary, because if National manage to create a side project Political Party in a safe National seat, the game will be all over.

If National stood aside for a new Conservative Party in a safe National seat, or had a current electorate MP ‘leave’ National to create a side project Party, they would overwhelm the Left.

There were two things that stood out for me during Trump’s State of the Union address.

The first was his need to laud the courage of others who were tested in situations his policies are exacerbating.

If Trump had one inch of the courage of the heroes he hid behind, we wouldn’t despise him so much – that he requires their acts of conscience to gloss over the lack of his, is the real story.

The second thing that stood out was his constant use of economic statistics to justify his first year in Office. Trump has injected the US economy with Meth in the form of inane corporate tax cut welfare and is now congratulating himself for the erratic heart beat and psychosis.

This address was billed as bipartisan but Trump doesn’t build bridges, he napalms them and then blames the fake media for pointing out he’s burnt them.

This is a man who will say Black on Monday, White on Tuesday and then by Friday scream that no one cares about colours.

THE EGG AND SPERM RACE

Who knew the battle of the sexes could be so funny?

Comedian Sacha Jones didn’t until she took to the comedy stage in phase three of her mid-life crisis and discovered that her feminist angst and hard-won PhD in the subject was actually useful for something, making other people laugh.. It was also cheaper than buying a pub, a somewhat more popular solution to the mid-life blues. And Sacha’s husband agreed, though that was before he knew that a good portion of her comedy would be about him. Not many comedians have husbands and Sacha quickly realised the potential to break new comedy ground by bringing ‘the husband’, and her husband in particular, to the comedy stage. So far their marriage has survived.

But in 2018 Sacha is taking her mid-life gamble to the next level by bringing her cutting-edge comedy about marriage, motherhood, masturbation and madness to the stage in three intimate, hour-long shows. Please join her and see why everyone, even her husband (for now) is laughing.

THE RUDE AWAKENING. SEX, SHAME AND LIBERATION

Award-winning International cabaret star Amber Topaz invites you to sit back, relax and join her in an arousing, amusing, anecdotal romp through life, love and libido.

Full of mind-blowing, fascinating biological facts. Intertwined with mad musical numbers highlighting the absurdity of human behaviour under the influence of hormones. An uplifting, thought-provoking journey through conception, chemistry and the quest for human connection. Inducing belly laughs and moist tear ducts. Not for the prudish or easily offended.

TOXIC MAS

Toxic Mas is a one man show that talks about toxic masculinity, his father’s death and the one moment that changed his life forever.

Cameron McLeod has been performing stand-up all over the country since 2014. Now comes his brand new show covering what it means to be a man, our relationships with each other and why the idea that we are alive at all is amazing. Guaranteed to have plenty of laughs, this show also has multiple stories from his life – some serious, some funny, all thoughtful.

IT’S A TRIAL!

It’s a Trial, but unlike you’ve ever seen. With the help of real expert witnesses and a maverick Judge, opposing lawyers duke it out over a case that has major implications for the future of the arts. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll debate the issues. All rise!

LADYLIKE: A MODERN GUIDE TO ETIQUETTE

After a sold out season at the NZ International Comedy Festival 2017, comedian Louise Beuvink is back at Q Theatre with her smash hit show, Ladylike: A Modern Guide to Etiquette.

From the art of passive aggressive Facebook comments to the science of making champagne with a goon bag and a SodaStream, join Louise for a masterclass in etiquette and housewifery for the modern age. Don’t miss one of NZ’s most exciting young comedians.

“She’s unapologetically authentic and ranty and witty and funny and it’s a very good show” – The Ruminator

DING!

The Improv Bandits pair up to take each other out in a battle of the wits. The only thing that can save them is the bell. Ding! is 1/2 quiz show, 1/2 game show and 1/2 improvised comedy show so it’s 1 and a 1/2 shows packed into 1 – great value for money!

Hosted by Wade Jackson, no two shows are the same but they are all guaranteed to delight you and give you a good ole rib-ticklin’ time.

SHOT BRO: CONFESSIONS OF A DEPRESSED BULLET

Multi-award-winning actor and writer Rob Mokaraka (Nga puhi/Tuhoe) will perform a personal story about his very real fight with a bullet and depression. A black comedy that entertains and enlightens those who have been directly, or indirectly, affected by depression and loss with an uplifting message: There is a way out of the dark.

Shot Bro is the product of Rob’s seven-year journey of healing and self-discovery. It is a powerful, raw, authentic one-man show that exposes shares and discusses the effects of depression. At the core of Shot Bro is Rob’s personal journey, one that can help others and alleviate the stigma attached to mental health. Using his utility belt of tools like stand-up comedy, expert dance moves, mime and puppetry, Rob unfolds his depression in an entertaining yet insightful way, shining light on a traumatic event.

Each performance is followed by an open forum where the audience will have the opportunity to korero (talk) with Rob.

NATIONWIDE DAY OF ACTION FOR FREE PALESTINE:

Saturday 3 February will see a nationwide day of rallies in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom & focussing on the campaign to free all Palestinian children from Israeli prisons and strengthening the international boycott movement and divestment of Apartheid Israel.

The AUCKLAND RALLY will be at the Aotea Square from 2pm.Green MP Marama Davidson will be a guest speaker. Marama was NZ’s rep on the Women’s Boat to Gaza in 2016.

WELLINGTON: 2pm Cuba Street, Sat 3 February

CHRISTCHURCH: 2pm Bridge of Remembrance, Sat 3 February

DUNEDIN: 2pm The Octagon, Sat 3 February.

[See kiaoragaza.net “Israeli forces have killed three Palestinian minors and detained 52 others since the start of this year” Palestine Chroniclereport 29/1/2018]

Please share this invitation and go to ourFacebook Events page for more information:

Kate Hawkesby: I don’t trust Meghan Markle I have a thing about Meghan Markle.

I don’t trust her.

It’s a theory based on nothing more than gut instinct. Here’s the thing – she feels fake. Opportunistic. Like she’s there for the wrong reasons.

Let’s look at the evidence.

Look I don’t care about the Royal family, I don’t doff my cap to anyone based on blood line, but I like the new generation of Royals, and the idea of a ‘mixed race commoner’ marrying into the Royal family for love warms the cockles of my dead black splinter of a heart and I only read Kate’s column because the majority of media I’ve skimmed has all been positive so I wanted to read something that was negative.

I’m still not sure what the bloody hell Hawkesby’s actual point is.

Her list of ‘evidence’ is about as convincing as a flat Earther and as spurious as the ‘science’ behind the Ark.

I was reading it thinking to myself, ‘where the fuck is this going’ – and I still couldn’t explain to you what was her point.

It’s mean spirited, petty and kinda spiteful with no purpose. The whole thrust of her ‘argument’ was that Meghan Markle has somehow sneaked her way into the royal family.

And then it dawned on me.

Was it that Markle is mixed race? Was that the real issue here? That somehow she was tricking her way into that most white of institutions and being deceptive about it?

Is this the tone that all mixed race people had to put up with? Having a foot in both cultures but suspicion from each?

I know Kate Hawkesby as well as I know Meghan Markle so I don’t want to attribute bigotry unjustly but this is ugly at best and purposely cruel at worst.

It reads less like informed opinion and more like a script out of Mean Girls.

I was thinking about the recent rumblings in the National Party towards their ‘leadership team’, and something didn’t quite add up.

The main reasons why you’ll see challenges mounted towards a Party’s Leader and Deputy is pretty simple – the Party either did poorly at the last Election … or looks set to do poorly at the next one. There’s a subsidiary reason-set concerned with the personalities occupying those positions facing immediate and seemingly insurmountable scandals (perhaps one might say this is what happened to Don Brash during the 2005-2008 Term) – but those tend to tie themselves right back to that second reason.

In National’s case, it’s doubtful whether either reason is the case.

It’s true to state that they did not “win” the 2017 General Election – insofar as they are not, presently, the bedrock of a Governing Coalition.

But the plain fact is that they did not exactly “lose” support themselves last year, except in purely percentage terms. In actuality, their number of votes went *up* on 2014, and only shrank as a proportion of the overall vote due to increased turnout.

So while ordinarily, there would arguably be a prima facie case for a defeated National Party to be looking around for a head to fall upon the chopping-block following an unsuccessful Election campaign … I’m not quite sure that a reasonable observer would agree that it needs to be the case here. After all, Bill English did *well* better than many people expected; and the “loss”, in practical terms took place at the Coalition Negotiation stage rather than at the ballot-box or on Election Night proper.

Certainly, a *certain former Minister* who was doing a lot of campaign managing for National over the last few years, *does* look like a potentially viable target for National internal scorn right now – but he is neither Bill English nor Paula Bennett, and therefore a leadership challenge would not directly put paid to him.

Now this leads me on to the *second* frequent-potential-reason-for-an-attempted Coup – namely, worried MPs freaking out that they’re not in a viable position to win the next Election.

And for various reasons, I genuinely don’t think that many Nats are in *that* basket either.

The main reason we can tell this, I think, is that if they *were* we’d probably have started to see a few List MPs either resign or begin making noises about doing so. Either because they think there’s something better they can be doing now and they want to go out before National slides any further … or because they don’t think that waiting around for three years will actually get them their old jobs and perks back.

Or, from a less ‘voluntary’/’altruistic’ perspective .. because they’ve been low-key *forced out* in order to make way for “rejuvenation” by bringing in new Backbenchers and promoting upwards on the List into Shadow Cabinet and the like from the extant crop.

The fact that we *haven’t* seen this indicates – to me at least – that there’s a fairly high level of confidence in the National Party that they won’t do significantly *worse* in 2020 than they did in 2017, and with other changes in the psephological terrain … may even find themselves back in Pole Position once more.

National’s polling in the most recent Reid Research remaining steady [in fact, going *up* by 0.1%] despite Labour’s climb would further serve to underpin this.

Although against this, I suppose, you have Bill English [never the most charismatic of operators] sliding back into the mid-twenties for Preferred Prime Minister – but again, this was never a particular strength of his, and would *always* have happened against Ardern.

Anyway, that brings me to the crux of the matter.

The problem for whichever Nats are attempting to spread rumours of discontent about English/Bennett … is NOT likely to be as retribution for a poor electoral performance last year – because there wasn’t one. It’s ALSO not likely to be a pre-emptive strike and ‘clearing of house’ to set up for frantic efforts to improve the party’s prospects in 2020 – because that arguably isn’t necessary. Bill English connects with the right National voter demographics, and will probably connect with even more if NZF’s brief run at the “Center-Right” bloc of support continues to unravel with its present speed.

This leaves the somewhat rare potential reasoning for a coup of personal animosity between one or more of the leadership team and one or more of the factions within National itself.

And here, I think, we have struck paydirt.

I doubt it will be Bill English, either – particularly after some of the stuff that has apparently come out about Paula Bennett [c.f her demand for ‘skits’ in Caucus meetings etc.]

If Bill is being threatened as well, despite his positive results [relatively speaking] a few months ago, then it suggests that somebody’s had a quiet word to him about escalating discontentment about Bennett, and he’s made the decision to stand by his Deputy even despite the criticism.

Thus implicitly creating a scenario wherein National is effectively presented with the choice of supporting Bill and therefore *also* Bennett … or potentially seeing how they feel about getting rid of both simultaneously.

Compromise options in the middle are, as ever, a potential medium-grade possibility (you don’t get far in National without at least a *certain* facility at going back on previously held positions in pursuit of personal advancement or the maintenance of one’s loftily-held position, after all).

But with the possibility of *making things worse* for National both internally and at the next Election by getting rid of English/Bennett no doubt *also* weighing upon the average Nat MP’s mind … perhaps no serious moves will be undertaken just yet, pending any marked scandal or poll deterioration over the coming Term.

And further complicating the issue will be the paucity of potential replacements for Bill that National can conceivably unite around – with Judith Collins predictably having her own iteration of the #ABC political phenomenon, for a start; Simon Bridges perhaps being too unctuous as well as arguably too young [I somehow doubt whether National likes the optics on attempting to get a relatively young leader in as much as Labour did], and Nikki Kaye arguably likewise [and, for that matter, a metropolitan Aucklander].

Still, I have no doubt that Bennett will have gotten both a shock and a sudden rage-spike at what’s happened here. Somebody on one of my threads referred to her as a “sociopathic kindergarten teacher”; and I’ve previously seen memery to the effect of a Dolores Umbridge kinda characterization.

She’ll presumably become ever-more-insufferable as a result of somebody attempting a nuking-by-media against her; which may yet further inflame internal tensions within National, and might hopefully contribute more towards her eventual ouster.

As they say … couldn’t have happened to a nastier person.

—

Also, as a side-note/addendum about this business of Bennett wanting “skits” performed at National Party Caucus meetings …

I did wonder whether the logical takeaway about this was …

… that she’s actually acutely aware that the average Nat Minister isn’t sharp enough to actually *get* anything you present to them, unless it’s in a suitably over-dramatic, live-acted-out-in-front-of-you form.

Why do we have a housing crisis? Because nobody bothered to get a bunch of junior Nat back-benchers, dress them up as bricks-and-mortar and/or overseas investors or something, and demonstrate how “affordability” works with camp dialogue in front of Nick Smith.

Why do we have a river-is-full-of-effluent crisis? Because nobody bothered to get a bunch of junior Nat back-benchers, dress ’em up as a river, and then uh … well, I’m sure imaginations would have been deployed to demonstrate (again, for Nick Smith) the next part.

Part of me, when I first read about this, was rather aghast that my mental characterization of Paula Bennett as the sort of overbearing INFANTILIZER OF ALL SHE SURVEYS actually *did* seem to be entirely, 100% accurate

But like I say. I’m now wondering whether she was just simply aware of the best method to get results out of some of her even *more* lackluster colleagues.

Last night, these petty cowards in Parliament voted down medicinal cannabis reform.

These fucking base hypocrites!

So what Parliament is saying is that it’s okay to kill yourself if you are in pain, but it’s not ok to smoke a joint if you are in pain – what sort of a Circus Freak show of a Democracy is this? The double standards are sickening and outrageous!

Want to kill yourself because you are in pain? Oh we will rush that through to select committee immediately despite the enormous question marks over that. Want to smoke a joint because you are in pain? Oh no you don’t, back to letting the cops bust you and arrest you thanks.

Those who voted against this are disgusting parasites without any spine, guts or stones. Meanwhile tens of thousands of New Zealanders suffer the fear of Police brutality and Criminal gangs to get a medicine that alleviates their pain while these gutless fucking swine sit on their fat comfy arses on the leather seats of privilege.

Last nights defeat is proof positive that the sham democracy we slave under can not adapt to the realities of our lives as citizens. It is a reminder that the only way to stick it to these pompous fuckwits is to take matters into our own hands by way of a binding referendum.

I want to target one particular scum bag, National Party wonderboy – Chris Bishop. Listening to your bullshit excuse as to why you wouldn’t vote because it didn’t have ‘enough regulation’ was sophistry of the highest order.

Aren’t you a former tobacco lobbyist you filthy clown? Didn’t you peddle a product a thousand times more lethal than the one you just voted against?

Fuck you, you lying hypocritical maggot.

This is the National Party, the party of liberty and personal choice – what a load of corrupt sleaze bags with the ethics of vultures on meth.

Everywhere in the world where meaningful cannabis reform has occurred, it has done so because people put it to a referendum beyond the cowardice of politicians.

We will fight to get that referendum up in time for the 2020 election and on that day when we win, we will ram its results so far down the throat of these arseholes they gag themselves another set of lungs.

Respects to Chloe and the Greens for championing this and for running with it, their courage is to be saluted.

Jeremy Wells is one of the funniest and sharpest broadcasters we have and if he is allowed to do what he does best, Seven Sharp will become unmissable.

This is incredibly dangerous to The Project because why on earth would 18-39 viewers choose this…

…over this…

…now sure for actual news junkies this represents the continued degradation of the 7pm current affairs time slot, but I’ve got a good feeling that NZ will soon have a late night opportunity to see political debate unlike anything they’ve seen before.

A really good feeling.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/31/jeremy-wells-to-join-seven-sharp-finally-a-reason-to-watch-seven-sharp/feed/13So how easy would it be for Kim Dotcom to successfully sue the NZ Government for $6.8billion? Horrifically easy!https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/31/so-how-easy-would-it-be-for-kim-dotcom-to-successfully-sue-the-nz-government-for-6-8billion-horrifically-easy/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/31/so-how-easy-would-it-be-for-kim-dotcom-to-successfully-sue-the-nz-government-for-6-8billion-horrifically-easy/#commentsWed, 31 Jan 2018 01:34:10 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96571

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom sues New Zealand for $6.8bn An internet entrepreneur accused of masterminding one of the largest copyright infringements in history is suing the New Zealand government for $6.8bn in damages — equivalent to 3.5 per cent of the Pacific nation’s GDP — over the destruction of his business. Kim Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the US, alleges Wellington unlawfully issued an arrest warrant in 2012 that resulted in him being on bail for six years. This act damaged his reputation, restricted him from leaving New Zealand and left him under the threat of extradition, according to court documents. Mr Dotcom, a 44-year old German-Finnish national, is seeking damages for lost profits from Megaupload, the file-sharing site that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered shut down in 2012. He alleges the business, in which he owned a 68 per cent stake, would now be worth $10bn. “I cannot be expected to accept all the losses to myself and my family as a result of the action of the New Zealand government,” Mr Dotcom told the BBC.

There are 2 reasons why you as a NZer should care about the Kim Dotcom case.

The first is the unbelievable injustice of the entire fiasco. Kim was illegally spied upon by the GCSB, he was set up by NZ immigration services so that he would enter the country in the first place, our security apparatus slavishly followed US agencies with a live feed to the NSA during the raid, the entire event was politically motivated after Corporate Hollywood threatened to with-hold donations to Obama’s Presidential bid if they didn’t make a symbolic gesture against internet piracy, and the case against him is so weak it looks like incredible over reach by our authorities and US authorities…

In submissions put forward by Dotcom’s US lawyer Ira Rothken yesterday, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig said the United States allegations lacked merit.

Mr Rothken told Morning Report today that the legal team was very pleased to have someone of Professor Lessig’s status say that Dotcom committed no crime.

“We think that it’s not only beneficial for Kim Dotcom, but for internet users across the globe, who make use of technologies like cloud storage on a daily basis.”

The United States has been trying to extradite Mr Dotcom since January 2012, when he was arrested on copyright and money-laundering charges relating to the now-defunct Megaupload website.

Later that year Mr Dotcom was found to be the subject of illegal spying by the GCSB, after which an independent review of the bureau was ordered.

Mr Rothken said the case against Dotcom should have been thrown out before it was even filed.“We think the United States should take a look at this and seriously re-evaluate their case.”Dotcom will appear before the court on Monday.

…this case has been an abomination of legal process, jurisdiction and injustice. You might not like Kim Dotcom, but the manner in which his rights have been breached and 70 odd armed paramilitary cops broke into his home and terrorised him and his family is as unacceptable as the abuses of power used in court against him.

This is not what our justice system should be used for, we are not a puppet for US interests, we should be a sovereign state with our own laws and judicial system that is beyond influence by America and their corporate overlords.

But the injustice of this case may not move you. You may have bought into the media hype of Dotcom as a Bond Villain and enjoyed his failure at the ballot box. You may have decided that despite Assange, Snowden and Greenwald proving at the Moment of Truth that John Key lied to us about mass surveillance, that Kim fell short of what he promised and he got his just desserts.

If you fall into that category then the possibility of being sued if this goes south may concern you…

New twist in Kim Dotcom caseThe managers of the nation’s finances were kept at arm’s length when the Kim Dotcom case required Kiwi taxpayers to underwrite a potential future legal suit from the internet entrepreneur, a new document shows.

Instead, then-police commissioner Peter Marshall signed the “undertaking in respect to costs and damages” – the agreement which would allow Dotcom to sue New Zealand if it emerged the FBI case against him was unfair and unfounded.

It was the first time that the Crown was required to give an “undertaking” in a case where the property of someone facing charges was seized and was because the charges were brought by a foreign agency.

The need to provide an “undertaking of liability” emerged after police seized the tycoon’s cash and property without notice. The law required Dotcom have the chance to challenge the seizure and be given formal notice of his right to sue the Crown.

The need to provide an undertaking in March and April 2012 surprised the Crown and the Herald sought details of the debate and consideration over the risk to which NZ was exposed through the Official Information Act in July 2012. Treasury refused to supply the information sought so the Ombudsman was called on to investigate.

After three years of deliberation, Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakeham found there was a “public interest” which would be met by releasing a summary, which Treasury sent to the Herald this month.

The summary showed there were meetings “to discuss the case and how to inform ministers” were held Crown Law, police, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Justice and Treasury.

On March 22 2012 Finance minister Bill English was told he “did not have a role in approving or signing off this kind of undertaking”. Instead, it was the Commissioner of Police’s role under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act.

While Mr English was kept briefed – including a briefing from Mr Marshall and Attorney General Chris Finlayson – there was no process established through which he was able to be formally involved in the undertaking.

Under the Public Finance Act, Mr English is responsible for matters which might impact on Crown accounts. Dotcom has claimed the loss of Megaupload cost him more than $2 billion although others have argued the impact is far less.

The summary provided to the Herald said there had been a review of the mutual legal assistance framework of which Treasury was a part. It “intended to use the forum to recommend the establishment of a consultation process and set out criteria for issuing undertakings”.

The requirement to give an undertaking to the court to meet any damages was a factor which put Sony off joining a civil case seeking to claim Dotcom’s assets, emailed hacked and released last year revealed. Sony’s top copyright lawyer, Aimee Wolfson, said it was “not at all unimaginable” Dotcom would avoid extradition or even successfully defend himself in the United States.

The studio is not a participant in a case in NZ courts with discussion in the emails showing potential exposure to a legal suit from Dotcom concerning executives.

The risk to which New Zealand is exposed was underscored by a legal opinion released today from Harvard University’s professor of law Lawrence Lessig, one of the world’s leading experts on copyright law. He said the FBI charges would not stand up in US courts and there was no basis in law for Dotcom to be extradited.

…let’s re-read that again. Sony decided not to sign up to the case against Dotcom because they believed there was a chance he would get off these trumped up charges and in turn sue everyone involved in taking him down to the tune of $6.8billion???

National signed us up to this so they could suck up to America who wanted to stamp their jurisdiction over cyberspace and to ensure Corporate Hollywood continued to donate to Obama’s re-election campaign.

This entire spiteful episode has been a blunder and needlessly cruel – that the case could fall to pieces and Kim could successfully sue NZ seems the only righteous outcome.

Let’s see how many sleepy hobbits are laughing if Kim Dotcom wins at the Supreme Court.

The rumour mill has been running hot all month about the moves against Bill English, it’s finally spilled out to Barry Soper so it’s as close to official as it’s going to get.

Here’s the most feared outcome. Judith Collins is teaming up with Simon Bridges to take out the Leadership with Judith as Leader and Bridges as Deputy. Co-conspirators are meeting in Bridge’s electorate to plot the coming coup.

The attacks against Bill were started late last year when ‘someone’ started leaking the details of how much English knew in the Todd Barclay affair. That ‘someone’ was heavily rumoured to be someone inside National who wanted Bill weakened.

That ‘someone’ will be instrumental in the new coup now.

Bridges is the future of the Party and is incredibly smart. He played the new government horrifically by simply having a puzzled look on his face for the first day of Parliament. He is also great friends with Matthew Hooton so expect the Hoot to be eye ball deep in the coup.

The reason why Collins is likely to be Leader is because only she can truly manipulate the spite, hate and anger deep inside National voters who believe they were cheated. She can turn that ugliness into political muscle and she is a fan favourite of the Chinese ‘Blue Dragon’ faction inside the National Party who are now the most powerful faction inside the Party.

If Judith becomes Leader with Bridges as Deputy that means Cameron Slater (Judith’s de facto son) and Matthew Hooton (Bridges’ de facto best friend) will have unprecedented influence and power.

While the new Government stumbles over itself to be inclusive, our enemy grows and is about to become vastly more powerful while some of the most venomous political thugs get welcomed back into the Leaders Office.

It will need far more rational players inside National to stop this, Paula Bennett had been groomed as the safe replacement to block Collins from becoming Leader because National Party Leadership are terrified what Collins would do with the power, but it looks like they have failed to stop Collins and Bridges building momentum.

The other rumour pushing for Bill’s replacement within National is the belief that the video footage of the SAS war crimes in Afghanistan which Bill claims he has seen and doesn’t show war crimes is actually ‘out there’ and it is only a matter of time before it is made public which will make Bill’s claim that there was no war crime look indefensible.

Watch where Maggie Barry, Mark Mitchell and Jami-Lee Ross jump to see if Judith will become the new Queen.

Jacinda’s got 99 problems, Judith Collins could be 98 of them.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/31/inside-the-moves-against-bill-english/feed/40Handouts to the Racing Industry? So no more homeless then?!https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/31/handouts-to-the-racing-industry-so-no-more-homeless-then/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/31/handouts-to-the-racing-industry-so-no-more-homeless-then/#commentsTue, 30 Jan 2018 17:35:39 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96516.

He’s promising the racing industry a multi-million dollar track that can be used even when its pouring with rain. Mr Peters says it is expected to cost around $10 million to construct.

It comes as several races throughout the country had to be abandoned.

The track could be in Waikato to boost the region and be closer to some of the breeders, with Mr Peters saying Waikato would be “a good option”.

The Minister says both taxpayers and the industry will be helping to pay for the new track.

Mr Peters is also promising tax relief for owners who are breeding horses for racing. He says the current legislation, which he delivered last time he was Racing Minister, isn’t working like it should.

“When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes. How can you claim you’ve been successful when you have growth roughly 3 percent, but you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world?”

For Winston Peters to be offering tax-breaks and taxpayer funded covered racetracks, at a time of critical need for boosting funding for housing, hospitals, mental healthcare, and other services is a return to the corporate cronyism we’ve experienced for the last nine years under National.

“Now the first movie has grossed more than $1 billion, Warner Brothers should repay the $67 million subsidy the movie moguls sucked from Kiwi taxpayers.”

After all the criticisms from Labour and NZ First at National’s corporate welfarism, the Coalition government has succumbed to the same folly of throwing money – our money! – at multi-million dollar businesses.

For an industry sector that turns over $1.6 billion, it beggars belief that they have their corporate hands out for taxpayer largesse and tax breaks. What other industry will be receiving tax breaks? Tourism? Wine and beer producers? Why not our nascent computer-gaming industry? Or Rocketlabs?

Key must be laughing his head off at this fiasco. After all the ‘stick’ given to Key and his National government for their corporate welfare, the Labour-led coalition have engaged in the same practice – only three months into their first term.

Was there no one with sufficient political nouse in Labour or NZ First’s Parliamentary offices to express reservations over this daft plan? That giving tax-dollars and tax-breaks to a “sport” enjoyed by predominantly affluent New Zealanders is not a particularly good idea? Especially when Labour and NZ First (and the Greens) made so much of New Zealand’s housing crisis during last year’s election campaign?

In effect, Peters has just handed the National Opposition a bloody big stick with which to whack the Coalition over their heads. English and his minions will be gleefully strategising over how they can best use this corporate welfare to attack the Coalition.

National’s strategists have already started by launching this attack-website carrying negative messages;

.

.

Side-note: Interestingly, the website is done in Labour Party colours – not National’s own blue livery. The National Party is not even directly mentioned anywhere on the main page. (Though the “Privacy Policy” link will take you to the National Party website. The authorisation statement is by “G. Hamilton”, National’s General Manager – though few people would know that.)

The racing industry has complained that a covered race-track is essential to allow all-weather events to be held. If so, let the racing industry pay for it. The “Sport of Kings” should not be paid from the taxes of hard-working New Zealanders who expect essential services in health, education, conservation, housing, mental health, policing, etc from their hard-earned tax-dollars. Not enhancing horse-racing facilities.

For perhaps the first (and hopefully the only) time, I find myself nodding in agreement with far-right blogger and former Libertarian/ACT candidate, Lindsay Mitchell, when she wrote her own critique of Peters’ plans;

Today [28 January] Racing Minister Winston Peters apparently promised an all weather track at the cost of $10 million (double it for starters) and either promised or called for tax breaks because the industry (breeding in particular) brings in so much money.

If tax breaks can make one industry stronger, then they can make any industry stronger.

Government picking winners is a recipe for corruption and injustice. We cannot expect New Zealanders who have not a skerrick of interest in the racing industry to disproportionately pay taxes to advance it.

Tax breaks are not subsidies if they are applied universally. Reduce tax period.

You are a guardian of public money Winston. Not a private investor.

On the upside, I am looking forward to our Prime anti-poverty crusader getting it in the neck today over her government’s support for “rich pricks”.

I, for one, will not be defending this policy from criticism from the Right. Because with thousands of New Zealanders homeless and struggling in poverty, it is indefensible. Absolutely, utterly, indefensible.

If the Coalition government wants to assist the racing industry, and they are incapable of raising their own funds, then a suitable compromise is available. The State could easily borrow on behalf of the racing industry and on-lend to the appropriate racing club. Governments with good credit ratings can generally borrow at lower interest rates than from the commercial banking sector.

But it would have to be paid back.

The responsibility of this Coalition government is simple: Putting roofs over homeless families.

National leader Bill English has continued to slam a “pathetic attempt at bipartisanship” from the Government on child poverty but acknowledged today a briefing was offered in 2017.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday that she had written to English on the 13th of December outlining the bill and offering a briefing on her new child poverty measure, which the Government intends to write into law.

She was responding to English’s criticism on Monday that the Government was talking up bipartisanship around the issue but didn’t offer a briefing on the measure until Wednesday, when the legislation was due to be introduced.

…by playing up the bi-partisanship desires, Labour have opened the door for English to criticise Jacinda for effectively lying and not being genuine in her offer.

Here is the actual timeline…

…instead of championing a new Child Poverty legislation while flaying National for implementing failed right wing experiments that hurt those kids in poverty, we are arguing about whether Jacinda is being honest with Bill English!

This is not the debate the new Government should be having! Their desire to be inclusive only works when you have an Opposition that is genuinely constructive, at what point will the Labour leadership team comprehend that National are vicious power hungry born to rule pricks?

When does Labour learn you can’t work with National?

How many times does National need to spit directly into Jacinda’s face before someone realises that bi-partisianship simply makes the new Government look weak?

When National lied directly to the country’s face about the $11.7billion budget hole? Was that a good time to appreciate National aren’t constructive?

When National tricked them into believing they didn’t have the numbers to elect Trevor Mallard as Speaker simply by Simon Bridges having a puzzled look on his face? Was that a good time for Labour to appreciate National will deceive and manipulate to win?

When National forced Labour to give them more seats on select committees dooming any legislation to being roadblocked through the process, was that a good time to realise National are the danger?

Instead of championing the new Child Poverty law we are arguing about Jacinda’s offer of bipartisanship.

It’s time the new Government started getting a tad more ruthless and direct with its agenda and looking like winners rather than looking weak with all the bipartisanship virtue signalling.

Severe drought followed by severe rain fall followed by severe temperatures followed by a Tropical cyclone? That’s so many extreme weather events all in a row for NZ, it’s like ‘something’ is changing the climate or God is hugging the Earth extra tight

Seeing as climate change is a political issue and no longer a scientific one – TDB will name all cyclones hitting us this year after the MPs & Corporations who are feeding the climate denial – this one is Cyclone Fonterra.

The reason why there will be a dramatic jump in the support for radical green politics that go beyond the carbon neutral by 2030 empty gestures within the current political spectrum is because voters, after a while, are going to start staring out the window at weather patterns they know in their bones are different to the ones they have grown up with and those votes will ultimately revolt against the lack of preparation to adjust to the great cultural, economic and social adaptations we need to begin adopting.

The campaign had been launched a week earlier and sought to “call on Kiwis to show love for their rivers and lakes,” according to its inaugural press release.

Its Twitter account appeals to celebrities to share their favourite New Zealand swimming spot (Justin Bieber is one of many yet to respond). Its website features a large banner which reads “Rivers are good for you” and a cartoon mascot, a kōura, donning a snorkel.

A few days after crowning its song of the summer, the campaign hit the mainstream media when it released the results of a public survey declaring many New Zealanders were not swimming in rivers, primarily due to water temperature.

It light-heartedly concluded the nation had become “soft”; its press release appeared almost verbatim as news stories in several media outlets, repeating the line that Kiwis were not swimming in rivers, and that it was primarily because they were cold.

The sudden emergence of this campaign at a time of hyper-sensitivity around the politics of freshwater struck some as suspicious.

Swim Fresh, as it clearly states, was funded and conceived by Blackland PR, a crisis management and corporate consultancy that prides itself on influencing public perception of controversial issues that threaten a corporation’s reputation.

In its own words, on its website: “[W]e take arguments and evidence in your favour deep into the New Zealand public. We change hearts and minds, undermining those who threaten your business.” It says the most direct way to do that is through social media.

It has used those skills to try and build public support for oil and gas exploration, to advise food manufacturers on debates about obesity, and assist alcohol manufacturers in debates about public policy.

It has also advised the dairy industry on “influences of debates about water quality [and] environmental impact,” according to the corporate advocacy work listed on its website. One of the company’s clients is Dairy NZ.

Swim Fresh’s spokesman, Mark Blackham, is the PR company’s founder and a long-time lobbyist. The campaign is staffed by Massey University’s communication, journalism and marketing students.

The reason behind the campaign, Blackham says, was to show a different side to the water quality debate: one of positivity, in opposition to the “silly polarisation between good and evil”.

“We’ve heard about all the rivers that are not good, but we’re not necessarily hearing about the waterways that are okay,” he says.

…the Machiavellian thinking behind Swim Fresh is an important one for the Left and the Unions to appreciate if they have any hope of countering the Rights evolving attack styles.

Those polluting the water desperately need to shift the debate away from pollution because the sheer greed, outrageous abuse of the environment and simple science of it all crucifies the Dairy Intensive Farming Industry.

So rather than try and debate the issues, those polluters need to change the discussion all together by seeding bullshit apologist joke stuff about people not wanting to swim in Rivers, not because we fear being poisoned but because we have all gone a bit soft.

Because many news rooms are now staffed by cheap hipster Millenials with 1500 Twitter Followers, it’s easy to have this propaganda unquestioningly inserted into the news cycle.

The concept is to generate as many reasons as possible as to why people aren’t swimming in rivers that don’t include getting sick which immediately reminds everyone about Farmers polluting the water.

The issue is not that NZers are too soft to swim in cold river water, the issue is that the river might make you sick. Eliminating the reality means the debate doesn’t happen which is exactly what the water polluters want and that’s what a company like Blackland PR offers as a service.

The Left and the Unions don’t have a counter strike capacity to this kind of manipulation and that leaves them vulnerable as enormous amounts of money from the Right starts funding these groups.

So what does the Taxpayers’ Union and a naked Jordan Williams have to do with any of this?

One needs to appreciate that the Taxpayers’ Union is the new attack vehicle for the right. With Slater’s Whaleoil Blog robbed of any relevance or media attention after Dirty Politics, the right needed a new weapon to manipulate the media narrative with, but in a manner less radioactive than Slater.

Consider them the Holy Trinity of Right Wing arseholes, the Father (Farrar), the Son (Bishop) and the lowly boast (Williams).

The point of the organisation is to astroturf themselves into being considered a ‘union’ standing up for taxpayers when the reality is they attack Government agencies for private vested interests using the old stereotype of lazy slush fund drenched big Government narratives.

And what about that naked Jordan Williams? How does that unpleasant image tie into all of this?

That boast wasn’t for shits and giggles, it was the deeply held belief of the Right wing establishment. They all honestly believed that Winston was in it for the baubles and they could simply bribe him with offers.

What the Right did not appreciate about Winston, and what those helping run the back channels during the negotiations immediately understood about Winston, was that what he wanted, what he really, really, really wanted was to dismantle neoliberalism.

The shock wave on the Right caused by Winston wanting to change NZ went far further than Jordan’s bet to walk downtown Wellington naked (a bet he chickened out on in the end) and it’s gone full snarling grievance.

For the Right, this is a Government of trickery who conned the public. This isn’t a victory, it’s a theft and the deeply held resentment against the new Government can be seen in the manufactured drop in business confidence and the attempt to create another ‘winter of discontent’. It is important to understand this resentment and the genuine shock because that helps explain the viciousness with which National intend to employ to destroy the new Government.

So who is in the firing line as National marshal their attack dogs?

The rumour mill is running hot as to who National and their various House of Slytherin mercenaries will be targeting but here are the likely ones…

Equity NZ: The hammer will fall hardest here. For Key’s Government, the manufactured crisis at the Hobbit was a political and cultural gold mine. By manipulating NZers love of LOTR, the Government whipped up sentiment that the Union was threatening the making of the Hobbit film here. The anti-Union backlash was apocalyptic and not even Helen Kelly rushing to the defence of Jennifer Ward-Lealand could help in the end. By painting himself into a corner to gain a political victory over the Union movement and the wider Left, Key had to agree to giving Warner Bros more corporate welfare plus re-wrote employment law for the benefit of Corporate Hollywood. This time around National already has agents in the field whipping up the usual Weta workshop technical elites and will look to once again manufacture the collapse of a current film project and lay the blame at the feet of Labour for attempting to unpick the ridiculous labour law National put into effect. With Amazon announcing the new TV series of Lord of the Rings with New Line Cinema involved (they are a division of Warner Bros who made the film with Peter Jackson), the most likely attack line will be to suggest the TV series will be filmed here and use the attempted passing of the Hobbit Law to manufacture the supposed uncertainty. Expect to hear a lot of ‘Australian Union’ rhetoric and ‘greedy actor’ statements. If National can force Labour to walk away from the law or blame the new Government for the TV series going somewhere else (even if it was never going to be filmed here in the first place) it will be an enormous political victory that will perpetrate all the negative stereotypes about Labour in the thrall of the Unions. Expect to hear about the LOTR TV series possibly being filmed here a couple of weeks before the new Government starts to look at officially changing the law.

PPTA/NZEI: The public hate teachers and any time the Right can hold up a teacher who has assaulted or sexually harassed a student to make the point that being a ‘registered teacher’ meant nothing for the safety of the student, they will. This matters because only registered teachers can teach and what the Right wanted to do with Charter Schools was side step employing registered teachers so they could lower staffing costs. The money to back this reform is still there from the private education industry so expect any case of a teacher abusing a student to be magnified and amplified with brutal skill.

All public transport and Port Unions: National in opposition will push ahead with any campaign that has money backing it and that’s the explanation behind their inane roads every where campaign. National will want and will actively promote strikes in public transport or Ports because they want industrial action that creates wide spread disruption, especially if it grinds traffic to a halt. Expect to see a lot of public transport companies become incredibly unreasonable all of a sudden.

Public Service leaks: After 9 years in power, most public service is dominated by right wing goons who fully approve of the draconian welfare state created by National. As Labour attempt to change this culture of abuse, expect to see huge leaks highlighting the worst cases of welfare fraud and people who are difficult to find any sympathy for.

These are but a few of the targets the Right are gearing up to attack and exploit, so how do the Unions prepare for this?

I suggest throwing Stephanie Rodgers & Ruminator a bone.

For the record I’m being figurative and not literal here.

Both are failed Wellington political bloggers and both have gone off to form consultancies of their own but I’m not for one second actually suggesting that anyone in the Unions hire these two. I think they come from a generation who seem to believe any discussion in private can immediately be added to their live Twitter feed and before you know it you are suddenly on the bottom of a social media pile on for some heteronormative patriarchal sin (especially from Ruminator) but the reality remains that both of them have more talent in their tiny fingernails than most of the coms teams currently working at any Union in NZ.

The Generals of the Union movement need to seriously consider a small, well resourced (and most importantly outsourced) response team who can aid any Union getting attacked and immediately counter the smears the Right will indulge in or else risk getting out played by the Taxpayers’ Union and whatever astroturfed death squad the Right send in to attack the Union movement with.

Attacking a pregnant woman in a society that worships the cult of Motherhood would be a kamikaze approach and personalising the attack against Jacinda could back fire terribly in two ways.

The first is that it just looks like bullying and the vast majority of people will simply have their primordial reptile brain impulse to immediately defend a pregnant member of the tribe switch on and turn against the attacker with full frontal fury.

You lose when you attack a pregnant woman. Always.

The second more dangerous angle is that by attacking Jacinda, National opens the doorway to the criminally misogynistic hate vomit that has been sprayed around social media with the kind of carefree abandonment of a militantly malicious Tom cat over the last 24 hours.

Some of the comments on Kiwiblog and the Young Nats Facebook page are just fucking spectacular in their scumbaggery. I mean, I appreciate the spectrum of humanity is a wondrously broad and gloriously diverse rainbow, but fuck me some people seem to live in a reality that skipped the Renaissance, Enlightenment and basic Universal Human Rights.

…the Right are going to attack the new Government by going after those the public identify with Labour rather than attack a pregnant woman.

Could this strategy work? It certainly could.

The Left won the last election not because of tactics (the Labour Party were pretty much crap during the 6 week campaign) but because of strategy. Something no one acknowledges in Labour winning is that it was Matt McCarten’s strategy to beat National by actively going after National’s allies that won the Left the election. By knocking out Peter Dunne with Greg O’Connor and eliminating the Māori Party with Willie Jackson, National where left short of a majority in Parliament.

What we will see with National in Opposition is a similar approach, they won’t go after Jacinda directly, they will go after Labour’s identifiable allies to chip away at the new Government’s popularity by evoking Union bogeymen.

It took the Left 3 terms to work out how to beat a popular leader, it will take the Right less than 30seconds.

If the Union movement in NZ wants the new Government to get a second term, they need to urgently start planning a counter strike capacity they currently don’t have, and if the Union movement don’t like what I’m saying to them now, just imagine how much more unpleasant you’ll feel when I start the ‘I told you so’ blogs.

You have been warned.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/28/taxpayers-union-astroturf-jordan-williams-naked-and-how-national-attack-worker-rights-unions-in-2018-someone-throw-stephanie-rodgers-ruminator-a-bone/feed/17One Year of Trump – when will we start blaming the Democrats for this orange fascist?https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/28/one-year-of-trump-when-will-we-start-blaming-the-democrats-for-this-orange-fascist/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/28/one-year-of-trump-when-will-we-start-blaming-the-democrats-for-this-orange-fascist/#commentsSun, 28 Jan 2018 00:54:27 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96448

Last week, the anniversary of the one year madness of King Trump came and went.

There was much snarling and rolling of eyes at the absurd level of scumbaggery and insult that this tiny handed orange fascist has managed to create in a mere 12 months. That he has proved to be so much worse than predicted and that he is nothing more than a distracted dog chasing every car he gets angry at is as terrifying a reality as the violent revenge fantasies he peddles to a white working class who have been left behind by globalisation.

It’s great to feel disgusted, terrified, angered, furious, pissed off, defiant, vindicated and belligerent about this horror clown’s first anniversary in power, but without understanding how this cancer was visited upon us, we are doomed to repeat this mistake.

Opponents of Trump like to point to the Russian interference in the election to explain Trump winning, but I think blaming Russia for ‘hacking’ the US Election is deeply counter productive.

Secondly, it allows the Democrats off the hook. Instead of acknowledging they ran a terrible candidate and fielded neoliberal policies that hurt the very workers they had simply assumed would vote for them, the Democrats can avoid scrutiny of their own rigged primary process, the manner in which Bernie Sanders was unfairly treated and their hollow policies by blaming it all on Russia.

Newsflash to the Democrats – Trump didn’t win because of Russia, he won because you failed to appreciate how your embrace of neoliberal globalisation hurt the very voters you needed the most.

One estimate puts the budget of Russian interference in the election via social media advertising at $250 000. With all due respect for American Democracy, if you can influence an election with a mere $250 000, you have way bigger problems than Putin.

We can scream racist and sexist as much as we like at Trump voters, but when Trump wooed Union families, women and the working poor in such huge numbers, something else needs to be examined as the reason this malignant tumour of a human being has been forced upon us all.

The free market globalisation that the Democrats embraced has robbed the domestic working classes of their dignity and economic ability to survive. Bernie Sanders understood this which is why he would have been able to woo those voters Trump needed back to the Democrats and beat Trump, but the vile corruption within the Democrats (who played to the elites within the Party) robbed Sanders of his nomination in a rigged system set up to prevent a populist left winger ever winning the candidacy.

By putting the Identity Politics of being the first Woman to win the Presidency over the economic needs of the poor, the Democrats handed the election to a snake oil merchant like Trump.

Refusing to acknowledge failed economic policy and corruption within the Democrats in allowing Trump to win makes the chances of him winning again more likely, not less likely.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/28/one-year-of-trump-when-will-we-start-blaming-the-democrats-for-this-orange-fascist/feed/75Why the vacant optimism of the ‘Humanity Star’ perfectly sums up the vanity of modern neoliberal NZhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/28/why-the-vacant-optimism-of-the-humanity-star-perfectly-sums-up-the-vanity-of-modern-neoliberal-nz/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/01/28/why-the-vacant-optimism-of-the-humanity-star-perfectly-sums-up-the-vanity-of-modern-neoliberal-nz/#commentsSat, 27 Jan 2018 20:44:07 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=96450

Rocket Lab should have called their contemptibly named ‘Humanity Star’, ‘The John Key Orb’ .

The effluence with which Rocket Lab defend their grotesque advert in the sky is as toxic as it is gag-inducing…

“The whole point is to get people talking as a planet and I think we’ve achieved that. If you’re going to do something big some people will love it and some people won’t love it and it’s all about sparking the conversation.”

…what the fuck?

What conversation?

This conversation?

“Isn’t it fucking outrageous that a corporation shot an advert into the night sky that we are now all forced to see as it passes over in some type of Orwellian Marketing Horror story that will have McDonalds, Coke and fucking Apple all eyeing this up as an opportunity to start advertising in the last piece of unspoilt beauty we haven’t manage to shit on yet as a species’?

Is that the conversation we are having?

Here is how Rocket Lab are describing their tacky business card in the sky…

”The Humanity Star is a reminder to all on Earth about our fragile position in the universe. The project aims to draw people’s eyes up and encourage them to look past day-to-day issues and consider a bigger picture, including the role space will play in the future of our species,”

“We must come together as a species to solve the really big issues like climate change and resource shortages.”

…are you fucking kidding me?

This advert of yours is a semi-religious thought experiment is it?

You are a commercial operation, who blessed by geography, happen to have a super cheap means of shooting low cost satellites into orbital space. You are not a philosophical movement or ethical resource for humankind to help determine the momentum of our species.

This is like a MacDonald’s burger wrapper telling us that they exist to remind us of the human fucking condition.

The sheer audacity of this self-deceiving sophistry manages to sum up all the vacant aspiration and vanity of modern neoliberal New Zealand in a way that would make John Key (who best represented this cultural mutation), blush with lust.

The 30 year neoliberal economic revolution can only sustain its dominance through a crippling cultural mythology that robs citizens of solidarity and leaves them as competing individual consumers powerless with nothing but their wallet as a voice.

Under neoliberal culture, there is no hegemonic economic structure under which we are all slaves, oh no, there is only individual success and individual failure. If you ‘succeed’ then you have done this individually, and as such, have all the moral and ethical rights to do what you wish with that success.

Likewise if you ‘fail’, you do so all on your own with no one to blame but yourself.

This luck egalitarianism is why we have no issues in NZ treating beneficiaries with such contempt. Why we don’t blink at 10 000 in prison. Why we turn a blind eye to 40 000 homeless. Why we ignore 220 000 kids in poverty. Why a suicide rate almost double that of the road toll doesn’t mean much.

Each of these are just the market working by punishing those too helpless not to succeed. It’s economic darwinism.

We lie to ourselves about our clean green brand when the reality is that we allow the agricultural industry to pollute and steal vast amounts of water. We ignore the truth that our relative ‘clean’ environment is only that way because New Zealand was one of the last places white people colonised.

We cheer Team NZ and sneer at those homeless in cars.

We property speculate ourselves to false illusions of wealth and decry public spending on state housing.

We lose ourselves in the labyrinth of neoliberal identity politics while the richest 1% own almost 30% of everything.

We cheer Lord of the Rings while trashing worker rights.

We shoot a bloody business card into the sky and tell ourselves this individual success of a medium sized enterprise is actually a metaphorical Plato-esk intellectual lantern to light the future of humanity!

Rappler chief executive Maria Ressa (right) speaking to colleagues at the Black Friday for press freedom rally in Quezon City, Philippines. With her is Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) executive director Malou Mangahas, who also spoke at the rally. Mangahas was recently in New Zealand for the Pacific Media Centre 10th anniversary celebration. Image: Rappler

Three United Nations special rapporteurs have added their voice to the global protests this week over the President Rodrigo Durterte government bureaucracy’s attack on the independent online news website Rappler and a free press in the Philippines.

Rappler has been the latest media target for the administration’s wrath over a tenacious public interest watchdog that has been relentless in its coverage of the republic’s so-called “war on drugs” and state disinformation.

Some media freedom advocates claim that the Philippines is facing its worst free expression and security crisis since the Marcos dictatorship, with The New York Times denouncing the “ruthlessness” and “viciousness” of Duterte’s disdain for democracy.

The death toll in the extrajudicial spate of killings range between 3993 (official) and more than 12,000 since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016, according to Human Rights Watch.

“He has effectively declared open season on those he and his minions accuse of being drug users and dealers … Exposing such brazen abuse of power is a hallowed mission of a free press, so it should come as no surprise that authoritarians like Mr Duterte usually go after independent media.”

The NY Times described Rappler as a “tenacious critic of the President’s vicious crackdown” and this had led to the government announcing on January 15 it was revoking the online news site’s licence.

No hard evidence
Media freedom watchdogs say the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has produced no hard evidence to support its “foreign ownership” in breach of the constitution accusations against Rappler and the company that owns it, Rappler Holding Corp. Rappler is challenging this SEC ruling through the courts.

Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez denied any “political motivation” behind the SEC ruling on Rappler.

Rappler and many supporting news groups staged “Black Friday” demonstrations across the Philippines on January 19 when chief executive Maria Ressa declared her organisation would “ hold the line” on press freedom, insisting journalism was “not a crime”.

“We’re doing journalism. We’re speaking truth to power. We’re not afraid and we won’t be intimidated,” she said.

Ressa has joined a group of courageous, outspoken and defiant women opposed to Duterte who are “being marginalised, silenced, or worse”, according to The Diplomat.

Highly successful and innovative website
Ressa founded Rappler in 2011, originally on Facebook (now 3.6 million followers), after being CNN’s leading Asia investigative journalist for several years. It has been a highly successful and innovative online and “citizen journalism” website, with an Indonesian edition and the slogan “independent journalism with impact”.

Rappler’s Facebook cover image #StandWithRappler

Rappler currently faces a “cyber libel” complaint that is seen as highly dangerous for the media.

Duterte has also threatened to block renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise – the largest and most influential television network in the Philippines and publicly criticised the Philippines Daily Inquirer for its alleged “slanted reporting”. (A Duterte crony, San Miguel beer baron Ramon Ang, then seized a majority ownership stake in the company).

University of the Philippines journalism professor Daniel Arao said the President’s criticism echoed the martial law era, when then dictator Ferdinand Marcos ordered the shutdown of media outlets that were critical of his regime.

“The Duterte administration is being creative in terms of harassing and intimidating the media, but there is also the brutality, the bullying and the crassness,” Dr Arao said.“Right now, he might even end up worse than Marcos.”

‘Flagrant’ violation
Describing the government’s stance as a “flagrant” violation of press freedom, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders watchdog announced it had asked the United Nations, UNESCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to take a stand.

“The decision to close Rappler is fraught with danger, hence the urgency of referring it to these international bodies,” RSF deputy director-general Antoine Bernard said. “We are very concerned about the safety of its journalists and the protection of their sources, especially as Rappler is well known for the quality of its investigative reporting.”

The watchdog’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard added: “For more than a year, Duterte’s notorious troll army has been spreading the rumour that Rappler is 100 percent foreign-owned.”

In a joint statement on Thursday, the three UN special rapporteurs said they were “gravely concerned” about the government moves to revoke Rappler’s licence.

“Rappler’s work rests on its own freedom to impart information, and more importantly its vast readership to have access to public interest reporting,” said the rapporteurs.“As a matter of human rights law, there is no basis to block it from operating. Rappler and other independent outlets need particular protection because of the essential role they play in ensuring robust public debate.”

The rapporteurs are: David Kaye (Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression), Agnes Callamard (Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions), and Michael Forst (Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders).

‘Dangerous, risk of murder’
Writing in The Diplomat, University of Portsmouth academic Dr Tom Smith warned that journalism in the Philippines “has long been a dangerous trade, one that carries a very real risk of murder with little likelihood of accountability”.

He reminded readers of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre when 58 people, including 32 journalists, were shot and “hacked to death, allegedly by members of the Ampatuan clan”. There had been no justice so far for the victims so far in a flawed prosecution case that has crawled over the past decade.

“Yet it is vitally important that Filipinos have a robust critical press to question a government up to its neck in human rights abuses.”This is why so many people are concerned for the future in the Philippines with the news that Duterte’s administration is trying to ban Rappler.

Dr David Robie is editor of Asia Pacific Report, published by the Pacific Media Centre.

Court Appeal Last Chance for Waiheke Community Group to Save Island’s Treasured Environment and Culture From Destructive Marina Development

Kennedy Point, which forms part of Putiki Bay on Waiheke Island, is a beautiful quiet bay surrounded by pohutukawa trees, with clean sea water and oysters that have historically been collected by local iwi and island residents. There’s a breakwater used for fishing, and a friendly beach frequented by families and visitors keen to swim in waters that are also home to the little blue penguin. Although close to the island’s only car ferry, that construction seems far apart from the peaceful beach and giant old tree with its roots trailing into the water of the bay. It is quintessentially, quietly Waiheke, with a cultural and historical significance, and where many generations of families have come to gather food and to enjoy.

It is for this reason, that SKP Inc – Save Kennedy Point, a concerned group of Waiheke locals, have taken up the fight to try to stop a marina from being built at Kennedy Point. SKP Inc. fears that the proposed marina is likely to significantly damage the environment and sea life and also fears that the marina will affect the shared and unrestricted access that ordinary Waiheke residents and visitors have enjoyed for decades in the quiet bay. In a battle that seems like a David versus Goliath scenario, SKP Inc. is seeking donations and support from the public to help fund its appeal to the Environmental Court to stop the marina from going ahead, and to make sure that Kennedy Point is there to serve everyone and not just the wealthy few.

But Kennedy Point Boatharbour Limited has other ideas for Kennedy Point, and is proposing a marina that will take up 7.3 hectares (approximately the size of 9 rugby fields) of the bay and its surrounding waters. The marina design controversially includes a floating car park and sewage tanks that will be placed into the sea bed at Kennedy Point – a design which has never been trialed anywhere in New Zealand. To date, SKP has raised $170,000 and needs substantially more, in its bid to save Kennedy Point from the commercial interests of off-island developers.

The proposed marina is likely to be a threat to the habitat of the little blue penguin community that breeds in the bay, a species in decline throughout New Zealand. Anticipated increased traffic from the proposed marina is also expected to impact on two island schools and 3 preschools, making school crossings much more dangerous and difficult for local kids and parents.

“A majority of the Waiheke community, including Piritahi Marae, environmentalists, Kennedy Point residents and many overseas visitors to the island have been shocked and dismayed by the seemingly inexplicable approval of such a development by Auckland Council,” according to David Baigent, Chair of SKP Inc, “particularly given the fragile nature of our coastal areas.”

Piritahi Marae spokesperson and well known local Sculptor Paora Toi Te Rangiuaia has said the majority of Waiheke residents and local Maori oppose the development. Many others are concerned about the siting of sewage waste tanks in the sea bed and its cultural and environmental consequences.

Deputy Chair of SKP Inc. Kathryn Ngapo says, “Putiki Bay has 70 known archaeological sites including the deeply historic paa site, Te Putiki O Kahumatamomoe which is a wahi tapu: it is the most historically significant bay for Maori on the island. There are also 5 sites of ecological significance here in the coastal marine area plus amazing birdlife: the godwits, the threatened northern New Zealand dotterel, and the little blue penguin which nest in the breakwater at Kennedy Point. This bay is worth fighting for.”

SKP supporter Kathy Voyles said, “What is at stake here makes it too important not to do something, as this marina is an attack on the environment, an attack on the little blue penguin and their burrows and on the public’s access to the beach and waterways at Kennedy Point. It is also an attack on the Waiheke way of life that we all so dearly value and treasure.”

Many volunteers, including the world’s only environmental activist sheep, Multi, the merino romney ewe, and her owner, Sue Pawley, have collectively raised $170,000 in the last 6 months, a huge amount for an island of around 8,000 people. Now in a bid to raise the rest of the funds required, the island community and internationally renowned local artists have come together to put on a musical family fundraiser called Sun Kissed Picnic (details follow).

A Sun Kissed Picnic on a magical island by a jewel blue sea at a private bayside location.

Save Kennedy Point (and SKP Inc.) are thrilled to announce a picnic festival of musical and artistic delights for all ages.

MC Jeremy Elwood will keep the audience entertained between awesome sets from King Kapisi,The Mighty Herbsmen,Radio Rebelde, The Solomon Cole Band and Aaron Carpenter and the Revelators – all performing against the backdrop of a beautiful private bay surrounded by ancient pohutukawa trees.

Our ‘Princess of the Pacific’ Tanya Batt, with musical maestro Peter Duncan Foster, will also be in attendance to tantalise your ears with Waiheke-centric stories. We’ll also be showcasing local artisan food and wine and a Kids Zone jam packed with interactive entertainment. This one is for the whole family!

Tickets are $49 for adults, $10 for children 5-15 years and free for children 0-4 years.
There are also a limited number of VIB Cabanas for sale to view the concert from in private catered style.

Sun Kissed Picnic is organized entirely by volunteers from SKP who are presently appealing a decision to allow a large marina at the quiet bay of Kennedy Point. The group are asking the community to dig deep and support our festival by the same waters that will be affected by such a large development. If this marina is built, a dangerous new precedent will be set for the rest of Waiheke Island and New Zealand as our public oceans are opened up to private development.

For more information and to donate follow SKP – Save Kennedy Point on Facebook and check www.skp.org.nz

This will be a zero waste and plastic straw free event in keeping with the SKP environmental ethos of treading as lightly as possible on our small planet.

The Greens’ Medicinal Cannabis Bill will have it’s first vote in Parliament next Wednesday 31st Jan. This is sooner than we expected, so it’s really important to hit that keyboard and urge your MP to support the bill.

Here are some reasons you can use:

The public wants it, with over 80 per cent support for legalising medicinal cannabis in almost all polls.

Let the Bill go to Select Committee so the public can have their say in what they want in a medicinal cannabis law

The Labour/Govt Bill does not resolve the most pressing issues that people expect Parliament to address:

The Labour/Govt Bill does not provide relief for people with chronic pain or any other non-terminal condition that cannabis-based medicines may alleviate;

The Labour/Govt Bill does not allow terminal patients to grow or obtain medicinal cannabis even though they’ll have a statutory defence for using or possessing it;

The Labour/Govt Bill does not protect providers of medicinal cannabis (those making balms, tinctures, etc), these are often family or friends and if they are arrested the patient loses their access;

and The Labour/Govt Bill does not actually allow domestic production as it fails to amend s14(3), which prohibits issuing licenses to manufacture a controlled drug for consumption other than research or study (ie, no actual products can be made here).

The Greens’ Bill resolves all these issues. At the very least, it should go to Select Committee for further discussion and public input.

Take a few moments to email your local MP or any MP you feel represents you (the easy to remember format is firstname.lastname@parliament.govt.nz) or leave a constructive message or comment on their Facebook page. If you see any MPs out and about weekend be sure to raise the issue with them!

If you are in Wellington or can travel there, be at Parliament for the vote. It’s really important to demonstrate support in real life, as they are about to determine the fate of thousands of New Zealanders suffering in pain and from a variety of ailments that cannabis can alleviate.

This will be a conscience vote, meaning MPs vote in the best interests of the country, rather than their party. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister David Clark have both said they will vote for the Green’s Bill, at least to select committee stage.

In particular we need to target Labour MPs of the more conservative variety, all NZ First MPs, and National MPs of the more liberal variety.

NZ First MPs are the reason why Labour’s Bill is watered down. They are why Julie Anne Genter is not Minister in charge. They are why protection was not extended to those suffering in chronic pain. They are the most important MPs to help sway.

We also think a few Labour MPs won’t vote for the Greens’ Bill, so we need perhaps 10 to 15 National MPs to vote for it. It’s a big ask, but if they listen to the public or have an ounce of compassion they should support this Bill.

Be sure to let NORML or other cannabis reform advocates know how you get on.

There is a silvery-green lining even if the Greens’ Bill fails to pass, which is why I think they’ve put it up for a vote now: it will flush out opponent’s arguments and provide a measure of where Parliament is at ahead of the vote on the Government’s own Bill. If it fails to pass that will increase pressure on the Govt to make substantial changes to their own lacklustre Bill.

They’ll have a better idea of what additional reforms Parliament is likely to support – and we’ll know who to vote for next election!

• Reinstatement will be restored as the primary remedy to unfair dismissal.

• Further protections for employees in the “vulnerable industries”

• Restoration of the duty to conclude bargaining unless there is a good reason not to.

• Removal of the MECA opt out where employers can refuse to bargain for a multi-employer collective agreement.

• Restoration of the 30-day rule where for the first 30 days new employees must be employed under terms consistent with the collective agreement.

• Repeal of partial strike pay deductions where employers can garnish wages for low-level industrial action. Employers have deducted pay for actions such as wearing t-shirts instead of uniforms.

• Restoration of union access without prior employer consent.

…the most important of these repeals is forcing bosses to stay at etc negotiating table. The new reforms the new Government are suggesting aren’t that huge…

• A requirement to include pay rates in collective agreements. This is based on recent case law. Pay rates may include pay ranges or methods of calculation.

• A requirement for employers to provide reasonable paid time for union delegates to represent other workers (for example in collective bargaining)

• A requirement for employers to pass on information about unions in the workplace to prospective employees along with a form for the employee to indicate whether they want to be a member.

• Greater protections against discrimination for union members.

…the right to fire law won’t be aimed at small business (who employ most of the people in this country) and the new reforms will make incremental change.

I think we are well passed incremental change.

I believe that no matter your role in society, be it doctor, dentist, nurse, rubbish collector, stay at home parent, beneficiary, prisoner, accountant, farmer, pensioner, bus driver, tow truck driver, taxi driver, politician, labourer, what ever it is, you are important. The fabric of society and community is woven together by everyone and everyone deserves a fair share of the harvest. If the rubbish collector stops the cities shut down in a month, if Doctors refuse to work people die, if lawyers weren’t around we wouldn’t know how much we hated lawyers, everyone has a role to play. We counter a status driven self absorbed culture by demanding workers get that dignity with progressive conditions. If we are serious about a Living Wage, tackling poverty in a genuine manner and ending welfare and beneficiary ‘dependancy’ we should fight for a worker levy and open Union membership.

I think every worker entering a new job should automatically be enrolled with the Union representing their sector. This open membership would cost a levy equivalent to two weeks union membership and workers could either chose to remain as members or if they don’t want to be a member for whatever reason, they can contact the Union and remove their membership.

They would still pay the levy. That is the cost of the standards and work safety conditions the Union has already negotiated prior to that worker entering the job, and as such is the price for having safe work environments with beneficial conditions.

Too many NZers are not coming home from work because they have been killed on the job. Pike River was a horror story and the Forestry sector continues to kill. The Labour Party in NZ birthed from the appalling work conditions in the Blackball Mine strike of 1908 because it’s always been work conditions that have driven unionism.

It is every working persons right to collectively bargain. The power structures of the boss enable them to constantly grind down labour costs leaving dead hard jobs with no conditions beyond the minimum. I say screw that. Life can be hard and barren enough without adding wage slavery to it. Open Unionism and a worker levy as I describe it here would generate a large increase of resource to the Unions and the automatic enrolment would immediately strengthen Union bargaining power. This real muscle will force poverty down by demanding better pay and strengthen worker rights.

Unions must demand more, the right to strike, a worker levy and open Union membership are ideas they need to build and push if the pathetic union membership rates are ever to be expanded and real inequality challenged.

David Fisher from the NZ Herald has added to my story TDB published earlier this week regarding the Human Rights Review Tribunal not having the funding to actually prosecute cases of abuse against the Police and State…

A tribunal set up to hear breaches of human rights has become so overworked and underfunded it can’t even schedule a phone conference to plan a hearing, according to an email sent by a staff member.

The amount of work handled by the Human Rights Review Tribunal has doubled over two years even though funding and staffing levels remain the same.

It has meant huge delays for those bringing complaints of discrimination, harassment and privacy breaches.

And for those who have brought cases, the Herald has learned of two that have had a three-year delay in having decisions delivered.

Associate Justice Minister Aupito William Sio told the Herald: “I am very conscious of the increase in workload being faced by the Human Rights Review Tribunal and have been briefed by the Ministry of Justice.”

He said there were two law changes heading for Parliament – both introduced when National was in power – but recognised more needed to be done.

“I am actively considering other ways to address the issues being faced by the tribunal”.

It can’t come soon enough for those who have taken complaints to the tribunal seeking prosecutions of those they claim had breached their rights.

Activist and blogger Martyn Bradbury said he was stunned to receive an email from a tribunal staff member telling him that it had no idea when his case against the police would progress.

He had been seeking a telephone conference with the tribunal and police to schedule the next steps in his case after police were found to have unlawfully accessed his data during the hunt for the Rawshark hacker.

The email sent to Bradbury stated: “The timing of a case management teleconference will depend entirely on the resources which the Government makes available to the tribunal.

“At the present time no accurate estimate can be given as to when a teleconference will be convened.”

Bradbury filed his case with the tribunal midway through last year after finding police had unlawfully accessed his banking information, citing “computer fraud”. The police inquiry appeared to have led to credit applications by Bradbury being handled and then rejected by the bank’s fraud unit.

Bradbury, who said he had nothing to do with the Rawshark hack, said the financial stress caused by the rejected application had huge mental health repercussions.

“The stress of all this, the sense of these ‘invisible hands’ moving against me, culminated in severe depression and self harm with two suicidal episodes at the end of 2016.”

He said the tribunal offered a chance to restore the damage done and the delay “gnaws away at you”.

“It is frustrating. This is the only avenue to hold police to account.”

Barrister Simon Judd, who takes prosecutions on behalf of the Director of Human Rights Proceedings before the tribunal, said the workload had led to delays which were frustrating.

“It can be very frustrating for the clients and they are waiting months or even years for a judgment. That’s pretty unacceptable.”

…the Human Rights Review Tribunal is the only mechanism open to citizens of NZ to hold the Police (and the State) to account for their abuses of power. The Independent Police Conduct Authority only has the power to recommend or suggest resolutions, the HRRT can force the Police to comply.

In my case, the Police have used huge loopholes to trawl the private information of thousands of NZers and put that taken information onto the NZ Police intelligence computer which is open to half a dozen other agencies without one warrant signed.

That we are in a situation where the only Tribunal in the land that can hold the Police and wider State to account is so underfunded that it can’t prosecute cases is an abomination to everything we should believe regardless of whether you are right wing or left wing.

I refuse point blank to allow the Police to get away with this level of mass surveillance abuse against me our my fellow New Zealanders.

UPDATE: The Associate Minister for Courts and Justice has reached out to me personally via Twitter with the following…

…I am meeting with MPs next week and will have an update on the latest after that.

I am pleased about the government’s proposed changes to the Employment Relations Act.

These initial changes are mostly just reversing the reductions in rights for workers and unions made by the previous National government.

While these changes will make the unions job a little bit easier it will not significantly enhance workers power.

Changes that could potentially do that are planned for later this year and next year. The Labopur Party has promised to reinstate the ability of unions to negotiate to end wage inequality for women and is looking at mechanisms to have minimum standards established for whole industries that have in the past ceased to be covered by union collective agreements. These are also potentially much more expensive and will threaten the “fiscal responsibility” rules the government has imposed on itself.

The employment relations changes that are being proposed to happen over the next few months include:

• Restoration of statutory rest and meal breaks.

• Reinstatement will be restored as the primary remedy to unfair dismissal.

• Further protections for employees in the “vulnerable industries”

• Restoration of the duty to conclude bargaining unless there is a good reason not to.

• Removal of the MECA opt out where employers can refuse to bargain for a multi-employer collective agreement.

• Restoration of the 30-day rule where for the first 30 days new employees must be employed under terms consistent with the collective agreement.

• Repeal of partial strike pay deductions where employers can garnish wages for low-level industrial action. Employers have deducted pay for actions such as wearing t-shirts instead of uniforms.

• Restoration of union access without prior employer consent.

New proposals are:

• A requirement to include pay rates in collective agreements. This is based on recent case law. Pay rates may include pay ranges or methods of calculation.

• A requirement for employers to provide reasonable paid time for union delegates to represent other workers (for example in collective bargaining)

• A requirement for employers to pass on information about unions in the workplace to prospective employees along with a form for the employee to indicate whether they want to be a member.

• Greater protections against discrimination for union members.

One disappointing decision was maintaining the right of small and medium-sized companies with less than 20 employees to continue use 90-day trials with the right to dismiss. This covers about 30% of workers but they are also often already the more vulnerable ones.

Achievements of Unite need recognising

In this blog I also want to note a few achievements of Unite Union over the last 15 years.

I want to do this because these achievements are worth celebrating in their own right.

They have been noted to a degree internationally. Unite representatives have been invited to conferences of unions and political movements in Australia, Brazil, US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Finland over the last few years and have spoken to meetings of members of parliament in four different countries.

Yet we have never been invited to speak to an academic or union conference in New Zealand – including the ones that claim to be left wing. Nor have we been invited to conferences of political parties other than one or two ‘far left” groups.

I was reminded by this because the “6th International Conference on Precarious Work and Vulnerable Worker” is being held in Auckland next week. It is a fascinating programme with many interesting speakers but it has a gap – especially since NZ is the host country – what Unite has done to challenge and overcome precarious work in some of the biggest industries using it.

On one level, I don’t care. I hate to sound like I am whining. I am happy for Unite to be judged on what we do not what we say. But I have come to a conclusion that there is a class bigotry in operation that is disrespectful to the tens of thousands of young workers who have joined Unite and fought heroic battles over the last 15 years which have achieved the results listed below.

50,000 young workers joining Unite. We need to recruit 4000 members a year to maintain our current size of 7000 members.

Gaining collective employment agreements in all the major fast food chains – including McDonald’s that cover tens of thousands of workers.

We are the only union in the world to have collective agreements with McDonald’s and other fast food companies where the law of that country does not force them to do so.

We are the only country to have collective agreements in the fast food industry where membership is completely voluntary.

We got rid of youth rates in the fast food industry and were part of a broader campaign that got rid of youth rates for most workers. In the UK youth rates apply to age 25, and in Australia to age 21.

We defeated zero hour contracts in the fast food industry and were instrumental in getting them outlawed through a unanimous vote of the NZ parliament under a right-wing National Party-led government.

Unite was the first union to identify the widespread theft of annual leave entitlements by almost all employers of workers with irregular hours. We initiated legal action against McDonald’s before MBIE, the government agency responsible, admitted that the problem was widespread and up to several billion dollars was owed to hundreds of thousands of workers in compensation.

For those who want to read a bit more about what Unite has done and how we did it see:

The irony that Mediaworks are bitching about Labour’s broadcasting policy when it was John Key’s mate, Mark Weldon, who killed off Campbell Live for political reasons is eye rolling, but let’s put aside all the self interest and consider the argument against RNZ being the de facto public broadcaster because there are good reasons why Labour’s plan to drown RNZ in cash is a bad idea.

The issue is this. Radio NZ, for all the wonderful things it does, is still an elitist establishment first and foremost.

Don Brash was resentful that he has to wake up and listen to Te Reo on Radio NZ each morning, while the rest of us feel resentful having to wake up to Guyon Espiner each morning. Espiner has such a smug level of undeserved self importance that he probably cries out his own name during orgasm.

RNZ is elitist and at a time when we have looming economic crashes and vast upheaval of ideas, RNZ doesn’t have the depth of class based ideology to cover those challenges because Radio NZ is as far from working class as humanly possible without actually taking up residence in Mike Hosking’s arsehole.

Let’s be clear, I believe RNZ should get extra funding, but not ALL the extra funding because as Mediaworks CEO Michael Anderson points out, that dramatically reduces the media diversity – the irony of course is that Mediaworks don’t bother attempting to put a progressive or openly left wing current affairs alternative to market because they’re still fighting over a diminishing audience of angry reactionary rednecks.

The new Government would be far better placed to put some of this money with NZ on Air while removing many of the current barriers that stop NZ on Air funding current affairs shows that are prepared to challenge the neoliberal hegemonic economic and cultural structure.

We saw in America and the UK that elite media missed the populist response to Trump and Brexit, if the new Government wants the populace to debate and understand the super structure of the system they are operating under, then funding media that actually does that rather than chase the cheap screams or the elitist high brows is required.

More money for RNZ is a solution to part of the problem, it are as hell isn’t the solution.

OK, it’s (almost) official. The zombie TPPA has been restored to life and Winston Peters will support it. Both Labour and New Zealand First will sell out the principles that led them to reject the ratification of the deal before the election.

They claim the TPPA 11 (I refuse to call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership) is much improved and that adopting it is in the national interest. No-one believes the spin. But both parties clearly calculate there’s enough political brownie points in supporting the deal to justify burning off the loyal constituencies who voted for them and expected them to keep their word. Only the Greens retain their principles.

What’s the latest move and is it irreversible? Last night in Japan, New Zealand and the other ten countries reached a deal to resurrect the TPPA, a year to the day after Trump notified the US withdrawal. The text remains unchanged, except for provisions about entry into force and similar institutional rules, the wording of which we have yet to see.

As most people who follow this know, some items will be suspended, pending the US re-entry. These include most, but not all, the really toxic rules that would expand the profits of Big Pharma, Hollywood, Google etc. Changes to foreign investors’ rights to sue the government have been trimmed around the edges but the main legal risks and corporate rights remain untouched.

All this was settled by the last ministerial meeting in Vietnam in December. There were four outstanding issues, including Canada’s demand for a stronger cultural exception.

The Canadian government was seen as the main stumbling block. Like our new government, they inherited a toxic deal. Unlike our new government they refused to become a party unless the others agreed to politically important bottom lines. Last night Canada cemented a deal that involves side-letters on culture, as well as on the local content of automobiles (something NOT on the list of the four outstanding items announced in Vietnam). That’s still not going to be an easy sell for the Trudeau government at home, but at least it played hardball and won some additional concessions.

In other words, Canada’s government showed political backbone and it succeeded. Ours caved at the first post-election meeting and rationalises that as the best they could do.

The signing is set for Chile on 8 March. We still haven’t seen the new text, and the Japanese have suggested it may not be released until after it is signed – including the side letters that Canada and some other countries have negotiated. The travesty of democracy lives on!

There is still time to put the feet of Labour and NZ First to the fire before 8 March, but it will be very hard to get either party that has put political capital behind the TPPA-11 to admit they are wrong. The longer-term game is the domestic ratification process, and rising the political price to a point where the current calculus no longer holds.

That needs to start now. Waitangi Day around the country should be an early test, although Labour, MFAT and pro-TPPA Shane Jones have been doing a hard-sell to Maori economic interests. There will be public meetings in Auckland on the evening of 12th February and in Wellington on 14th. Details will be on the Its Our Future website.

And yes, I know there are people who want to get out on the streets. We need to think about when and where that might have maximum effect. But we can’t go off half-cocked. People need to be confident that they know why the TPPA-11 is as bad as the original, and believe that their voices collectively can make a difference. And we can.

Ava Diakhaby (Flaps, ATC’s Boys) and Frith Horan (Mating in Captivity, Album Party) present Cool Behaviour (22nd-24th February); a ludicrously funny and wonderfully bizarre sketch comedy show that examines what it actually means to be ‘cool’. Why do we adopt certain ‘cool’ behaviours? Why must we spend our lives trying to be top dog, trying to out-perfect each other? Isn’t it all a bit ridiculous? We think so. There will be excellent acting, song, dance, and probably some Beyoncé in there somewhere. Join us on the race towards some sort of unattainable perfection, will we get there? Will we even get close? Who knows, but goddammit we’re going to try.

Cool Behaviour is two women examining the human condition and trying to get everyone to realise how little it matters to be ‘cool’ or ‘amazing’ or ‘perfect’ in this world. We want release a little pressure, bring a little joy and light up people’s lives through a night of our own, hand-crafted with love sillness.

“We are living in a time where people all over the world are starting to stand up and say “actually, I don’t have to live a certain way, I can live my way. I can do what makes me happy and I don’t have to follow another person’s set of rules. I don’t have to put up with crap that makes me unhappy” – this is what our show will celebrate.” – Co-creator Frith Horan

Ava Diakhaby and Frith Horan are two up and coming creators and performers in Aotearoa’s theatre scene, both incredibly familiar with writing and devising work. They performed in devised show FLAPS Retouched (2017), and Ava collaborated on The PlayGround Collective’s Wellington Season of The Rime of The Modern Mariner, directed by Robin Kerr (2016). Frith was one of four writers of the original show, Bravado! (2016), directed by Nomi Cohen and Benjamin Henson, performed at ATC’s Next Big Thing festival.

Presented as part of Auckland Fringe Festival at Q Theatre from 20th February – 4th March 2018.

Yesterday Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister David Clark announced a nine-month inquiry into the country’s mental health services, something health activists, families of suicide victims and many others had been calling for, for at least three years.

The previous National Government had resisted strong public calls for an Inquiry – while watching record suicide levels climb year on year – calling proponents, among other things, “left-wing agitators’. (Unlike at the Rio Olympics, the Nats were silent when this country won the ‘Gold Medal’ for the world’s worst youth suicide figures in 2017).

The news for English, Coleman, Doocey and all the other right-wing, born-to-rule crowd is that those ‘left-wing agitators’ seem to have won the battle. A Mental Health Inquiry, the first for 22 years has been announced. Properly resourced and with terms of reference that have been well-consulted among both health sector workers and community activists like the ‘Yes, We Care’ coalition, it is expected that it will draw submissions and stories from thousands of Kiwis, and will guide mental health policy for the next generation.

One of the most telling sections in the terms of reference is the recognition that underlying causes of poor mental health and suicide, such as poverty, poor housing, unemployment and discrimination will be considered as part of the Inquiry’s work – without that, such a review could easily descend into a debate between mental health professionals over issues like best levels of medication, or how many mental health beds there should be in hospitals, rather than looking at the factors that cause mental unwellness.

My partner, Jane Stevens – speaking as spokesperson for the Yes We Care Coalition’s Bereaved Whanau Network – said “The success of the Inquiry will depend on broad participation of those affected by our mental health crisis and suicide, and [needs] sustained political pressure and momentum to ensure lasting change.”

PSA Secretary Erin Polaczuk pointed out that “Mental health [care] demand increased by more than 60% since the last Government came to power in 2008, but that funding had been for less than half of what was needed.” The PSA is also a member of Yes We Care, and has hundreds of members working in the mental health sector.

A potential down-side of the Inquiry is the panel membership, which is predominantly a collection of bureaucrats and academics well-used to the ways of government, although some, like Maori academic Mason Durie, have a good reputation for excellent strategic thinking. One member, Barbara Disley, a former Mental Health Foundation CEO and first Chair of the old Mental Health Commission actually opposed an Inquiry during the 2017 election campaign, claiming action, not investigation was what was needed – not that we’d seen any sign of action from her, or her old Foundation, during the community-led struggle for change.

While the Inquiry will take 9 months to complete, some actions have been foreshadowed already, such as trained mental health nurses and/or support workers in schools across the country – expect to see this announced as part of the new Government’s first Budget. The old Mental Health Commission will be resurrected, and the Government has made it clear part of the job of the Inquiry will be to recommend its terms of reference, noting that the National Government had disbanded the Commission in 2011.

The question to be asked in all these sorts of actions is – will they deliver, or will they just be talking shops? As my partner points out, the level of informed public participation will be the key driver in that equation.

David Macpherson is TDB’s mental health blogger. He became involved in mental health rights after the mental health system allowed his son to die. He is now a Waikato DHB Member.

This time it is activist and journalist Martyn Bradbury who has been drawn into the police investigation.

And this time police inquiries are said to have had an awful impact, leading to two suicidal episodes.

Bradbury’s is the latest case of police unlawfully exploiting the Privacy Act to get personal banking information without getting a court order.

It follows the revelation that Dirty Politics author Nicky Hager also had his banking records handed over to police without any legal compulsion to do so.

The practice has been ruled unlawful after Bradbury – who runs The Daily Blog website – complained to the Privacy Commissioner.

Bradbury told the NZ Herald he uncovered the police probe after being rejected for credit by his bank.

He said he became suspicious because the “extensions of credit weren’t extravagant and the manner in which the declines occurred just seemed odd”.

When Bradbury sought information through the Privacy Act, he discovered that detectives working on the Rawshark case had made a request for his records saying they were investigating “computer fraud”.

Detectives did so quoting a section of the Privacy Act allowing those holding data to ignore people’s privacy if there are “reasonable grounds” to believe it would help “maintenance of the law”.

The ruling from Privacy Commissioner John Edwards found police gave Bradbury’s bank no information to make an assessment of whether the request was “reasonable”.

Edwards rejected police submissions that the request only lacked supporting information for the bank to make a proper decision.

Even if police had provided the information, Edwards said detectives “were not justified” in asking for the banking records without a legal order from a judge.

“It is our view the request for your banking records, given their sensitivity, ought to have been placed before a judicial officer for decision on whether it met the grounds for a production order.”

He said the “nature and the scope of the request was unfair and unreasonably intrusive”.

The request for information was “unlawful” because it was constituted a “search” and the Bill of Rights stated “everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search”.

Bradbury, who insisted he has no connection to or knowledge of the hacking of Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater’s computers, said: “They should have taken it to a judge and got a warrant.”

Instead, they sought “everything they could get their hands on”.

Bradbury will not name his bank as he intends taking further action.

But he said the bank’s refusal to give credit seemed contrary to staff assurances. His suspicions panned out when the Privacy Act request to police showed his banking records had been sought.

He found police had labelled the request for his banking records as connected to “computer fraud” and his credit requests – just a few months later – were being handled by the bank’s internal fraud department.

Bradbury said the credit requests were to help keep The Daily Blog going and getting knocked back triggered a huge depressive episode.

He said he had lived with depression since suffering a brain injury aged 18 from a car accident.

“Over the last five years that depression has become very difficult to manage and the financial stress of not extending credit all combined in late 2016 in two suicidal episodes.

“When your little black dog morphs and mutates into a huge black bear, you’re looking for anything that will ease the anguish and pain.”

Felix Geiringer, the barrister who acted for Hager overturning the police search warrant, said it was hard to understand any “credible basis” for including Bradbury in the Rawshark inquiry.

He said police appeared to have sought Bradbury’s records to try and establish the hacker was paid to carry out the hack. “There’s no evidence that took place in this case. There’s none.”

Geiringer said Bradbury – like Hager – was a journalist which conveyed specific protections around searches.

It was the same issue which the High Court rapped police in the Hager case, he said.

The NZ Herald has previously shown how police have used the Privacy Act exploit to gain banking details of potentially thousands of people without any court or judicial order – and that at least one bank has used it to red-flag customers.

The practice was widespread when the NZ Herald exposed it in 2013 and saw police headquarters offer assurances that it would not be used to access detailed banking records.

Yet police continued to use the exploit, not only in the Rawshark investigation against Nicky Hager, but in cases identified across the country.

Police told the Herald that the Rawshark inquiry remained an “open” file although no officers are currently assigned to the investigation.

A spokesman for police said the request for bank records was in line with a “Letter of Agreement” between police and the NZ Bankers’ Association.

“Police note that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner agreed that Police had a lawful purpose for collecting the information but that based on the level of sensitivity of the information, a court order was the only method that should have been used to request this.”

The spokesman said police wanted to speak with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner “regarding its view on requesting information”.

The NZ Bankers’ Association did not answer questions about the practice, even though it has acknowledged previously its members have an obligation to protect members’ information.

Among the questions it did not answer was whether the banking community had ever checked to see how many customers of banks have had their information provided unlawfully to police.

In a statement, NZBA chief executive Karen Scott-Howman said: “Banks assess all information requests on a case by case basis.

“They only provide information to the Police when they receive a production order that legally requires them to provide information or when the request complies with the Privacy Act.”

…As was detailed last year, the Privacy Commissioner of NZ investigated my case and found that not only did the NZ Police breach my privacy by gaining access to my banking data during their failed witch hunt of an investigation against Nicky Hager, but the Privacy Commissioner also found that the NZ Police had breached my civil rights through unlawful search.

We have been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for a time for the Human Rights Review Tribunal to actually pick up the Privacy Commissioners report and begin the process of holding the NZ Police to account for their breach of my privacy and civil rights.

Today after being told last year that a decision would be forthcoming early this year, the Human Rights Review Tribunal has gotten back in touch with me to inform me that due to a lack of funding, the HRRT can’t give any idea as to when my case against the NZ Police can begin.

If the NZ Police can get away with taking personal information from a political blogger that breaches the privacy act and my civil rights, they can do it to anyone and the supposed watchdogs that are there to protect us are so underfunded they’ve become lap dogs to police abuse of power.

The financial and emotional cost of taking on the NZ Police via an underfunded watchdog that can’t even budget to hold them to account is immense and difficult.

UPDATE: The Associate Minister for Courts and Justice has reached out to me personally via Twitter with the following…

…I am meeting with MPs next week and will have an update on the latest after that.